Encyclopedia of Fantasy and Horror Fiction. The Evolution of Modern Fantasy: From Antiquarianism to the Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series.

Bradley had previously called Walton's novel 'a book of wonderful humanity and great classic force.' References The novel was nominated for a 1984 Locus Award, but lost to The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley. Mary Renault described The Sword is Forged as 'a keen exploration of Greek myth', and Poul Anderson wrote that Walton's 'scholarship and realistic detail never get in the way of an exciting and moving story.' Praising Walton's combination of feminism and romantic love, Fritz Leiber called the novel 'the best fictional depiction of the Amazons that I've ever encountered'. But the Amazons emerge as a kind of terrorist branch of NOW, and Antiope's decline into All-for-Love milque-toastery is truly tedious.' Don D'Ammassa wrote in his Encyclopedia of Fantasy and Horror Fiction that the novel is 'an entertaining story but fails to measure up to Welsh stories'. Kirkus Reviews called The Sword is Forged 'an earnest, hard-working, but spindly reconstruction' of the Theseus myth, noting that 'Antiope has a certain pep in the first half here. Kirkus Reviews suggests that the takeaway theme of the novel is that 'love 'must always mean bondage' for women'. They go on to explain that novel uses Theseus to present 'a patriarchal challenge to the Amazon in terms which allow some inspired debate'. In The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, John Clute and John Grant cite The Sword is Forged as an example of the use of the Amazon in sword and sorcery as 'an icon of female autonomy'. Walton died in 1996, and the other two installments remain unpublished. The first volume was published as The Sword is Forged in 1983. After the success of the Ballantine editions of her Mabinogion tetralogy in the 1970s, Walton visited Greece and started reworking her own Theseus trilogy. She completely rewrote all three books in the mid-1950s, but put them aside when Mary Renault published her own Theseus novels, The King Must Die (1958) and later The Bull from the Sea (1962). Anderson, Walton wrote a trilogy of novels about Theseus in the mid-1940s. Molpadia, Amazon War Queen and Antiope's auntĪccording to Douglas A.They fall in love and she bears him a son, Hippolytus, but soon the Amazons besiege Athens to reclaim their queen. The Amazon queen Antiope is captured by Theseus and brought back to Athens to become his bride. It is based on the story of Theseus and the Amazon queen Antiope from Greek mythology. The Sword is Forged is a 1983 historical fiction novel by Evangeline Walton.

Witch House by Evangeline Walton