The Blue Sword was published by Greenwillow Books in 1982, receiving a Newbery Honor award. It is set in Damar — McKinley’s invented world — in a period roughly analogous to the British Raj: the Homelanders (transparently British) occupy the coastal regions while the Damarians (indigenous people with magic, horses, and a warrior culture) control the desert interior.
Harry (Angharad) Crewe is a young Homelander orphan sent to live with relatives at a colonial outpost on the edge of Damarian territory. She is restless, dissatisfied with the limited roles available to women in Homelander society, and drawn to the desert — to the Damarians’ culture, which she senses offers something her own does not. When Corlath, king of the Damarians, kidnaps her (following a vision that she possesses kelar — the magical gift of his people), she discovers both her power and her proper world.
McKinley’s inversion of the colonial adventure is deliberate: in most Victorian and Edwardian adventure fiction, the kidnapped woman must be rescued from the “savages.” Here, the kidnapped woman finds liberation — the Damarian culture values her abilities in ways her own never could, and her choice to fight alongside Corlath is not Stockholm syndrome but genuine recognition of where she belongs.
The Blue Sword itself — Gonturan, a legendary blade — chooses Harry, confirming her as a descendant of the ancient Damarian hero-queen Aerin (whose story is told in the prequel The Hero and the Crown).
Collecting The Blue Sword
First edition (Greenwillow Books, New York, 1982): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $50–$150
- Signed first edition: $100–$250
- Without jacket: $10–$20