In this third book in her series, sword-dancer Tiger has abandoned the northern academy of sword-dancing Staal-Ysta after a sword-dance to the death engineered between Tiger and Del turned lethal. He has vowed to find the unseen enemy who commands the pack of magical hounds that tried to steal first Del's jivatma and then Tiger's new blade. Certain that Del is dead, Tiger faces an uncertain future alone. But when Del appears in the night, Tiger's anger over her willingness to enslave him cannot be overcome. Del reluctantly joins Tiger in his quest for the source of the killer hounds. When their foe turns out to be a sorcerer named Chosa Dei imprisoned in a mountain, the skeptical Tiger is ill-equipped to deal with the powerful magician. In the end, Tiger's battle with Chosa leaves Tiger with a sorcerer trapped in Tiger's magical sword, Samiel. Tiger and Del must return to the desert south so that Tiger can seek out Chosa Dei's brother who may know how to rid Tiger's sword of the powerful, dangerous magician. In the South, Del must also seek her revenge by finding and killing the raider, Ajani who murdered Del's family. With each book in the Del and Tiger series, the relationships and plot become deeper and richer. Del must regain the humanity she has cast away in her quest for justice. Tiger is seeking the truth to his own identity. Growing up as an unnamed slave, without parents or family, Tiger created himself as a sword-dancer. Now, for the first time, he is questioning who his parents really were, where he came from; how he ended up with the Salset. The growth of Tiger and Del is a critical component to the success and the appeal of the series. Roberson delivers not only wonderful action sequences, but also nuanced characters who suffer the consequences of their decisions.

When we last left our heroes (at the end of "Sword-Singer"), Del, the Nothern sword-singer, and Tiger, the Southron sword-dancer-turned-sword-singer, had been forced into battle, and it was unclear who survived. "Sword-Maker" starts with Tiger stalking the "hounds of Hoolies" (unearthly beasts of magic) that had stalked him and Del as they journeyed into the North. He won the sword-dance in the Northern home of sword-training, Staal-Ysta, and left Del to die. As he tracks the beasts, and they try to harass him, he finds out that Del survived, although with major injuries. With the two having almost killed each other, the tension is thick between them, but they team up and go after the hounds. This leads them to a great sorcerer, Chosa Dei, who was long ago defeated by his sorcerer-brother, Shoka Obre, and imprisoned in a cave. Chosa Dei has been plotting his escape, through rather foul means, and a battle ensues between Del and Tiger versus Chosa Dei, with Tiger being victorious. But, that's too easy! Chosa Dei is dead, but his spirit is imprisoned in Tiger's sword, and the sorcerer strives to escape, possess Tiger, or both.

Meanwhile, rumors aboud of a messiah who will unite the nomadic tribes of the South, overthrow the tanzeers (princes), and turn the sand to grass. Hmm, sounds a bit like Frank Herbert's "Dune" but it isn't. Is the messiah real or a scam? Will Del finally find Ajani, the man whom, as we learned in the first book, "Sword-Dancer," killed her family? People from all over are gathering to see the arrival of the messiah, and Ajani might be there. Will Tiger survive his own sword, and learn to control it? Can he get it cleansed of the demon? Will Tiger's horse kill him? He's a mean horse! And, how many old acquaintances will Tiger and Del encounter? All of them, I think.

This is a better-than-average segment of a better-than-average fantasy saga. It is written well, although there is some repetitiveness ("Hoolies!"), and it keeps slipping into travelogue mode, with Tiger and Del going from here to there to there, and they keep encountering either characters from earlier in the story, or from their respective pasts, in a way that starts feeling formulaic or at least repetitive. However, the headstrong, obsessed Del, and the somewhat arrogant but grumpy Tiger are a pair of interesting characters. They have an ongoing battle-of-the-sexes, with lots of debate, bickering, sniping, teasing, and moments of passion and of genuine friendship and mutual respect (although they would both have trouble admitting it).

The bottom line might be that this above-average 464-page book could have been an excellent 350-page book. It is still a good read, if a bit slow and meandering at times.

Roberson's five-volume series seems to be structured much like a Shakespearean play, and in this, which is Act Three, things rise to a peak. We find Tiger, the one-time slave turned sword-dancer, on his way back to his Southron homeland with his new jivatma (blooding-blade, a magical named sword) and the rank of kaidin (teacher of swordsmanship, in the Northern tradition), recovering from a nearly-fatal wound taken in his dance with Del, the Northern swordswoman who had become first his partner, then his lover--the woman he's sure died from the wound he gave her. Before too long, however, he and we both learn that Del is alive, and seeking to rejoin him; penitent at having "used" him in her attempt to get to know her daughter, she still needs him as a sparring mate if she's to recover her condition and "end her song"--kill the bandit Ajani who destroyed her family. Del and Tiger's journey leads them first to a village being harried by the "hounds" Tiger has sworn to destroy--magic-made animals created by the legendary centuries-old sorcerer Chosa Dei, whom Tiger kills, taking his spirit into his sword in the process--and from there to the deserted Border city of Iskandar, where the long-prophesied jhihadi, or messiah, is shortly expected to appear. There, in a literally whirlwind climax, they learn that the jhihadi is Ajani, and his Oracle is Del's younger brother Jamail, the slave-lover of a Southron desert chief.

Robeson maintains a pace that increases so gradually you almost don't notice what she's doing, yet holds your interest through over 400 pages of story. She also strews a few red herrings about the plot--I was convinced that Ajani would turn out to have found a way, not only to re-quench his jivatma, but to retain all the power each killing had given it, and Tiger is given news that convinces him Jamail is dead. Unlike many fantasists, she also gives thought to the inevitable results of a long career as a warrior: Tiger, at 36 or so, is beginning to feel his age, and actually entertains dreams of what it will be like to settle down on the domain he's promised if he wins the dance that will determine whether the tanzeers (desert princes) and nomad tribes will go to war or not. Del is equally human, even though she's sure her obsession with revenge has turned her into something else; her very doubts make it plain that she's not as far gone as she thinks she is. Cultural background about both Del's Northern people and Tiger's Southrons is subtly and liberally provided, and the Borderer family of Adara, Cipriana, and Massou from the previous volume, with the "horse-speaker" Garrod, makes a return appearance. The book would be improved by a map of Tiger and Del's world, and I would have liked a little more explanation of how Tiger failed to know that Del had survived their duel, but it's a well-written and skillfully-plotted tale of love, revenge, politics, magic, and the human potential.

Last fall I did a search at the local library for books with the word "sword" in the title. I came across this series, and avoided it because book one was called "Sword Dancer". I finally succumbed, and made it through the first book.
As a classical fencer, I found the whole "sword dancer" thing annoying. Actual swordfights are described with words like "curlicues". The whole "Hoolies" thing was annoying.
The story is told from the story of an uneducated slave who won his freedom and spent years learning the sword and then hiring out to whomever had the cash. Yet he was really into describing fabrics and especially colors - maddened violet, or ochre, or whatever. Dozens of colors in a single paragraph.
And yet there was just enough to keep me interested, and I read each of the last three books straight through, one a night, staying up into the wee hours of the morning to finish before I slept.
It could have been a lot better - I'd love to see Dave Duncan get his hands on the stories and make all the sword fighting more believeable. But the books did hold my interest.

This absolutely sucked. I couldn't stand it. Right from the start I knew this was gonna be bad but I said, hey what the hell, let's give it go. Of course I should have listened to meself the first! I would not recomemed to pre-schoolers. J.Roberson should really give a rest. I give her a star for effort (grunt!!) but not much else..
"Hoolies, my god those HOOLIES!!"