The Black Mountains
core novel 1971 Empire of the East / Swords
Record
| First published | 1971 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 3.89 (279 ratings, collected 2026-11-02) |
| Internal chronology | 2 |
Synopsis
The Free Folk, under their commander Thomas, prepare to carry the war into the Empire of the East itself. Their main target is Som the Dead, a lord whose magic makes him almost impossible to harm and who is backed by demons. The Free Folk's wizards, among them Gray, hope that capturing the hidden essence of two of his demons will weaken his army enough to make him beatable. Rolf, the hero of the first book, follows the campaign, while the story also follows Chup, a crippled former Satrap who lives as a beggar among his enemies and must decide whether to pledge himself to the Empire's demon lords or refuse them.
Where it sits
- Universe: Empire of the East / Swords
- Series: Empire of the East core; position 2 of 4 in the series' recorded order
- Author: Fred Saberhagen
Notes
- From the series record (Empire of the East): Four novels about the war between the Eastern Empire and the Free Folk of the West, set after a change in the laws of physics, plus a much later novel in the same world.
Neighbouring works
Publication order and internal chronology are tracked as two separate orderings and are never conflated: a book's place in one says nothing about its place in the other.
- Publication order, within the series Empire of the East: position 2 of 4: previous The Broken Lands (1968) · next Changeling Earth (1973)
- Internal chronology, within Empire of the East / Swords: position 4 of 15: previous Woundhealer's Story (1986) · next The Second Book of Swords (1983)
Sources
- Wikipedia: Empire of the East series
- TV Tropes: Empire of the East
- Black Gate review of The Black Mountains
← Empire of the East / Swords dossier · All universes
Part of the Library. Fields without an identified source are omitted, never guessed.