The Fire Sword, The Crystal Sword, The Rainbow Sword, and The Sea Sword are magical swords representing the four elements. Classic high fantasy about our heroes on a quest to save the land right out of Campbell. However, these books are from the 1980s and are also clearly second-wave feminist speculative fiction centered around gender dynamics grounded in mythology. Each stands alone, but they function best as a set. So Light vs Dark and battle of the sexes and Freudian issues with parents and journeys of self-discovery.

Each magic sword has a magic sheath made from the skin of the Earth Serpent, the only thing strong enough to contain the power of the swords. And sword and sheath are used as literal metaphors (is that an oxymoron?) for mystical union of man and woman. So each book is about bringing magical artifacts and magical people together into unbreakable union. Yadda yadda. All very heteronormative and reifying plenty of gender stereotypes.

In comparison to The Rainbow Sword (book 3), The Sea Sword isn't quite as virulently racist, but it's even more white savior. This time, it's Geoffrey and Helen's daughter Claire. She's learned the arts of war from her mother and the arts of magic and general scholarship from her father, seeking her parent's love and approval yet not gifted in any of these things nor in a traditional domestic gender role. She knows about her parent's adventures but never thought she'd be called to find a sword. Everyone knew that would be her twin brother. But lo, of the 4 children, two are sent west (her brother and a sister), and she's sent east, and one remains home as solace to the parents.

I wondered whether all of the siblings' quests would be presented, but no, the whole book was Clair's POV with rare references to her brother and sister and parents. The family grew up traveling throughout the Mediterranean, and Clair is a polyglot who has lived in a lot of places and tried a lot of things. So when an Indian fakir shows up at the bazaar saying he was sent to find her, she's prepared to venture into the unknown. The book opens with a convocation of the goddesses, all of them, from all mythologies. Darkness is still in the world, and due to the events in the preceding books (The Fire Sword, The Crystal Sword, and The Rainbow Sword), the goddesses no longer can godphone directly with humanity. So it's a lot harder to send people on quests through direct dialogue.

Clair and her mentor Djurjati take a sea voyage back to India, while he tries to teach her Hinduism and Buddhism and does teach her meditation and Hindi. While all the time telling her that women can't ascend because they're impure. So again, brown people with cultural misogyny, not like those Europeans amirite?

Clair knows her family's history. She knows about connections with the goddesses, and how they have acted as loving mothers and patronesses to the generations before her, yet what she experiences are terrifying wordless visions of her death. On visiting Kali's temple she is possessed with the divine dance, which turns into a sword match with the goddess whose idol steps down from the altar, resulting in her taking the fateful sea sword and also losing a hand, leaving her disabled and despairing and very confused. This isn't the script. Clair is claimed by Kali, and dance is her connection to the divine, while Darkness-fueled mobs destroy temples, and the Indian pantheon fights back. She travels through India to the Himalayas through Tibet and Nepal and ultimately into China, encountering yetis, guardian lion-dogs, and various peoples.

She also knows about the sword and the sheath and the mystical union of lovers. But then she kills a Chinese dragon and finds in its wake the sheath along with a few other magical artifacts. So then she maunders on about how she's doomed to eternal loneliness because the dragon ate the man who was destined to give her the sheath and be joined as soulmates. Yadda yadda. We can all see the plot twist a mile away.

The dalai llama of that time and place tells her that her coming was prophesied and she is there to heal someone. Turns out his spirit has gotten lost, and she needs to reel it back to the body, which requires blending their essences. And we can see where this is going too. Guess who this is? The exiled Son of Heaven who was banished by his Empress mother 20 years ago after she married the leader of the invaders (I assume these are intended to be Mongols).

The magical sword was hardly used in this book and was seen as far more threat than salvation. Too powerful, the sword of waters could drown the world if fully unleashed. Without the mystical union of fated man and woman it is an uncontrolled artifact. Plus other magical artifacts play a role, including the jade rod of imperial power and heavenly mandate. Insert phallic joke here. In addition to Kali, Tara and Kuanyin make divine appearances not just to Clair but as public manifestations at times.

So white savior king-maker is the entire plotline. The true Emperor of China needs essentially his culturally appropriate foreign Joan of Arc to get him on the throne. Cultural appropriation, maybe, long before that was a concept that entered public awareness. And certain plenty of cultural/racial stereotyping when describing India and other regions of East Asia. Very dismissive of the Hindu caste system, and Clair is appalled by the entire concept of untouchables (which, fair point), yet she falls in love with Han China and doesn't seem to recognize the vast inequities and class system there. Again, might be authorial racism because Indians tend to be much darker than Han Chinese.

I liked this book best of the four because it was a lot more philosophical, exploring the nature of reality and life and death from various religious and cultural perspectives. And Clair's growth and self-revelation went deeper than earlier characters as she struggled with disability along with the inevitable parental issues and childhood traumas and her connections with a fearsome aspect of divinity. She found a spiritual home and an adopted land, far more so than previous generations who settled elsewhere. She did retire at the end of the book, but no making babies--this book was far to metaphysical for that. Plus I liked that this book was far more travelogue giving a sense of the flavors and sights and sounds of these cultures. The heroine thought logically in Greek and poetically in Arabic and was ambidextrous. She wrote home in Arabic and learned the Chinese writing system. This book was not at all about centering northern European culture and its presumed superiority. ( )