SWORDS

An unabashed browsing item, this big, square album is chock-full of digitally painted images of knives and swords, laid out in generic arrays with every nick, notch, decorative motif and gleaming highlight rendered in lovingly realistic detail. Though arranged in chapters according to type of user (“War Maidens,” “Landsknechts,” “Ninja” and so forth) and sometimes (there are many wordless spreads) even supplied with perfunctory descriptive captions, the sheaves of blades and galleries of elaborate guards and hilts are strictly eye candy. Detail junkies will revel in the specialized vocabulary run amok: Such more or less obscure terms as tang, wakizashi and blood groove (which, disappointingly, has “nothing to do with blood”) litter the pages, ripe for the picking. Armchair warriors, junior members of the Society for Creative Anachronism and budding graphic artists will be riveted. (bibliography) (Nonfiction. 9-16)