N1: Three Hearts and Three Lions by Poul Anderson

Book Review!

N1: Three Hearts and Three Lions by Poul Anderson

In “Appendix N” Gary Gygax recommended Poul Anderson, specifically mentioning the novels Three Hearts and Three Lions, The High Crusade, and The Broken Sword. For the sake of this review I want to focus on Three Hearts and Three Lions. I read a 160-page paperback version of the book with copyright years listed as 1953 and 1961.

The Good

*The book’s structure contains a travel-oriented plot with the characters adventuring from place to place to solve a mystery and save the day.

*I enjoy stories that focus on only a few core characters and Anderson masterfully keeps the core team down to the main character (a human paladin-esque man who ends up displaced in time/reality) and a couple of sidekicks (a dwarf and a “swan-maiden” shapeshifter).

*The scenes with monsters really stood out well.

The Bad

*The romance element in the story felt really odd at times.

*For its time, the “man out of time” concept likely stood out, but today’s audience probably knows of several movies and books that employ the technique and thus may feel turned off by the core premise of the novel.

*The chapters felt serial at times, especially when the group ended up in a “monster of the week” scenario fighting a werewolf in a village.

D&D Connections & Inspirations

*Anderson clearly gives Gygax and his crew the inspiration for a linear “law versus chaos” alignment system. Understanding how Anderson uses that concept in his story stands as enough of a reason for any true D&D buff to want to read this tale; in this story, the fey represent chaos and humanity exists to establish law/order.

*The story contains a regenerating troll that tests the book’s hero with riddles; this troll probably provided the inspiration for the D&D regenerating trolls. Strangely though, the book’s troll suffers from a weakness that sunlight petrifies him and D&D fails to reflect that characteristic.

*The book discusses different versions of the planet Earth and, what stands out to me as an example of what likely inspired D&D’s “Plane of Faerie” (which eventually turned into D&D’s Feywild). Gygax used the multiple-Earths concept throughout his RPG career, but even early Greyhawk’s Oerth stood out as an example.

*The narrator mentions several popular D&D monsters, including the manticore, dragons, the troll, the nixie, wargs, and griffins.

Overall

For my tastes, I give the work a 5/10 rating. I forced myself to push through the beginning of the book, but felt well-rewarded for staying the course.