The Sword and the Satchel

By Elizabeth Boyer

Kilgore is the teenage son of a local lord in place that sounds a lot like Scandinavia in the days of the Vikings. At the start of the story a mysterious sword has suddenly appeared in the lord's hall, jammed into a wooden beam, with a note attached: "Whoso pulls Kildurin from the tree shall rule over all the minions of Surt, to the confusion of the wicked and the confounding of their Power."
Naturally, everyone wants to have a go at pulling on the sword, but it doesn't budge until one night young Kilgore, unobserved, gives it a tug and it comes right out. Hearing someone coming, he stabs the sword back into the beam but sticks back in a slightly different place so now everyone knows it has been moved but who did it is not known. For some reason Kilgore keeps his secret until the wizard Skanderbeg and his magic satchel show up at the hall. For Skanderbeg is there to guide the sword bearer to battle against the evil ice wizard Surt who is trying to bring everlasting winter to Kilgore's world.
So off they go, Kilgore and the elf sword, Kildurin, and Skanderbeg the fire wizard and his satchel which has an infinite capacity to hold whatever is put into it. On their travels they have lots of adventures and close encounters and get to know lots of characters and eventually Kilgore goes up against the evil Surt and frees his world from Surt's domination.

This was an okay story. I don't know Norse mythology, but a lot of it read like a retelling of that sort of thing, which doesn't appeal to me very much. I don't really care for reworkings of old myths. Also, the characters never really came alive for me and the novel seemed to drag on way too long. I kept wanting them to get where they were going and get it over with.