Throwback Thursday: The Blue Sword

Throwback Thursday is a new feature at Reading Lark. We'll still be doing some Book Boyfriend posts and Book BFF posts on Thursdays as well, but the larks wanted a little variety on Thursdays. Throwback Thursday will allow us to celebrate some of the reads we loved way back when. . . 

The Blue Sword

By: Robin McKinley

Release Date: 1982

I loved this book! It was the first read that I recall that really challenged my own wild imagination. It featured one the of the first main characters who struggled as much as I felt I did with accepting her true fate. I was a typically angsty teen, so Harry's journey felt very similar to my own, since I was reading it in high school when I was anticipating all sorts of adventures as I prepared to launch into the world. 
This is the second in a series, and I mistakenly read it first. I remember trying to go back and read book 1, but having read the sequel spoiled it so much that I eventually gave up the whole series. The venture was not a lost cause, however, because I learned two important things: I love reading high fantasy, and I don't like reading series out of order. :)

Summary:

Harry Crewe is an orphan girl who comes to live in Damar, the desert country shared by the Homelanders and the secretive, magical Hillfolk. Her life is quiet and ordinary-until the night she is kidnapped by Corlath, the Hillfolk King, who takes her deep into the desert. She does not know the Hillfolk language; she does not know why she has been chosen. But Corlath does. Harry is to be trained in the arts of war until she is a match for any of his men. Does she have the courage to accept her true fate?