The Broken Lands
core novel 1968 Empire of the East / Swords
Record
| First published | 1968 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 3.72 (402 ratings, collected 2026-11-02) |
| Internal chronology | 1 |
Synopsis
In a far-future America, long after a catastrophe that changed the laws of physics, magic works and only scraps of old technology survive. The Empire of the East has taken over the region, ruled by the Satrap Ekuman. Rolf, a sixteen-year-old farm boy, sees his parents killed and his sister taken by imperial forces. He joins the Free Folk resistance, led by the commander Thomas and helped by the trader Mewick, who is secretly a spy and a fighter. Both sides look for a hidden object of power called the Elephant, which could decide the war, while a larger and stranger threat gathers behind the Empire.
Where it sits
- Universe: Empire of the East / Swords
- Series: Empire of the East core; position 1 of 4 in the series' recorded order
- Author: Fred Saberhagen
Notes
- First published as an Ace paperback original; no ISBN was printed in the first edition.
- 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 1 of 4: next The Black Mountains (1971)
- Internal chronology, within Empire of the East / Swords: position 1 of 15: next The First Book of Swords (1983)
Sources
- Wikipedia: Empire of the East series
- TV Tropes: Empire of the East
- Black Gate review of The Broken Lands
← Empire of the East / Swords dossier · All universes
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