The Fifty Year Sword is a tale of Dungeons & Dragons high fantasy, filtered through a modern experimental novella. No wait, I’m not sure that’s it; here, let me try again: The Fifty Year Sword is a Quentin Tarantino revenge story in the vein of Kill Bill, as translated by David Lynch. Or wait! A ghost story by way of post-modernity, illustrated at needlepoint. Maybe: a tower of thread and words, full of obfuscation and dark passions?
Really the best comparison I can make is not a simile (schimile) but rather an appeal to the author’s earlier work—The Fifty Year Sword was written by Mark Z. Danielewski, who wrote House of Leaves, which I believe is the only scary novel. In The Fifty Year Sword, Danielewski continues to cleave to a sense of menace, while telling a story of vendetta through sparse, disintegrating text against a backdrop of macabre stitches.
[Read more]