Opening Passage: There are two passages that can be considered the 'beginning', in the Note (which gives us the frame narrative) and Chapter 1. From Chapter 1:
He woke slowly. For a while he lay unaware of more than the pain in his head. Vision came piecemeal, until he saw that the thing before him was the root of a tree. As he turned over, a thick carpet of old leaves crackled. Earth and moss and moisture made a pungency in his nose.
"Det var som fanden!" he muttered, which means, roughly, "What the hell!" He sat up. (p. 10)
Summary: Holger Carlsen was a Dane who studied mechanical engineering in America; he was completely normal and unexceptional, behind the fact that he was adopted orphan. While he was in America, Denmark fell under the heel of Nazi Germany, but when rumors begin to spread that the Danes might be on the verge of active revolt, Holger returned to Denmark, despite the grave danger, and eventually joined the underground resistance. While involved in an important mission for the underground, he got into a shooting incident with the Germans in which he was apparently knocked out, and...
...woke naked in a strange forest, near a horse (named Papillon, according to the headstall) and some clothes and armor that were his size. Putting on the armor, he soon meets a beautiful swan maiden, who (as the name suggests) has a vestment that allows her to become a swan. Her name is Alianora. Sh takes him to Mother Gerd, a witch, who sends him on the duke of the elves in Faerie. Alianora introduces him to the dwarf Hugi, who becomes a trusted companion. When they reach the elves, Holger narrowly avoids being lured by the elves and Queen Morgan le Fay into a trap and put to rest for centuries beneath Elf Hill.
Meanwhile, he slowly begins to unravel the nature of the world around him. There are two great forces, Law and Chaos, in continual struggle. The fairy realm and all the bogies of human fear are on the side of Chaos, trying to turn the world back into some ungoverned and ungovernable state; on the side of Law are the major empires of men in the Middle World, the Holy Empire and, farther away, the Saracen lands. The denizens of Faerie have powerful magic, especially of illusion and glamour, but they are helpless before the holy symbols and prayers of Christianity. This comes us something of a shock to Holger, an agnostic. Holger also finds that he has something like a memory of the world, but just out of reach; he cannot recall anything, but sometimes he gets flashes and glimpses, and sometimes things seem very familiar, and sometimes he knows things that he certainly did not learn in our world. Figuring out the mystery hidden by the veils of memory will become essential to finding a way to return home. But when he does return home, what does he now leave behind, as a man who has lived in both worlds?
The overall story is not, I think, greatly surprising to anyone who knows the basic story of the Carlovingian paladin, Holger Danske, also known as Ogier the Dane, and the essential insight that Holger had to discover in order to begin to fulfill his role in that world and return to our own is one that I had guessed within literally a few minutes of starting the book. But it is told with considerable skill, and in that way is a bit like Twain's Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court -- if you know the story of King Arthur, you can guess a lot about where the latter story might go, but that's not the point, because it's not really a mystery story but (as we would say today in our anime-influenced world) an isekai, and the point is to see someone from our world make their way through another world.
The fantasy elements of the tale are great. The attempts to hold together our world and the Middle World are somewhat uneven, although they occasionally (as with the explanation of why those who steal a sun-turned giant's gold are cursed) are clever. Part of the point, of course, is that Sir Holger trying to reach the goal of his quest while Morgan le Fay and an army of Chaos try to stop him is doing something of essentially the same kind as Holger Carlsen in the Danish resistance racing to try to get someone important out of the country while being hunted by Nazis. The battles of Law and Chaos are not exactly the same in style in the two worlds, but they are the same in substance. And it makes sense that Anderson puts this in terms of Law and Chaos rather than Good and Evil; it is easier to convince ourselves that we should let Chaos rule than that we should submit to Evil, and, in any case, in World War II, we had plenty of reasons to recognize that Law could be flawed and Chaos attractive, independent of any moral question.
Where the book is weakest is in its humor. There's a lot of potential humor in a story like this, and I think Anderson doesn't manage to draw it out to more than an occasional chuckle. I think this is what primarily prevents Three Hearts and Three Lions from rising to the level of Connecticut Yankee; the latter's easy humor both makes it easier to immerse oneself in the story and gives the social commentary aspect of it a greater depth than it would otherwise have. Nonetheless, unlike Connecticut Yankee, which would be practically unbearable if it were not written by someone as funny as Mark Twain, this is not primarily a comic work, and therefore, while lessened by its missed opportunities in humor, is not hurt as badly as it might have been by this weakness.
It is difficult sometimes to return to the sources of things. This book has been so influential on pop fantasy that it's necessary to remind yourself that you aren't seeing a trite repetition of a common trope but the first original that everyone is imitating. Dwarves are often portrayed in pop fantasy as having Scottish accents, which might seem rather random; but the reason is found here, where Anderson gives, for the very first time, a memorable dwarf character who speaks in broadly Scots-like dialect. Parts of the story can easily read like a Dungeons & Dragons role-playing campaign -- but the reason is not that Anderson is indulging in the bad habit of LitRPG but that early Dungeons & Dragons often imitated Three Hearts, and parts of that were so popular that they continue today in many different versions of many different fantasy role-playing games, which have in turn influenced fantasy on screen and page. (The same problem arises for the Conan stories, and for exactly the same reason.) The original should not be blamed for being popular and influential, even if some later imitations have degenerated to a sort of cargo-cult repetition. If you can come to it with fresh eyes, however, this is an enjoyable and rewarding book, and it is easy to see why it captivated so many, and why people have been imitating bits and pieces of it ever since.
Favorite Passage:
Everywhere around were stars, but unthinkably remote in a black heaven. The Swan flashed overhad, the Milky Way spilled suns off its dim arch. Carl's Wain wheled under the Pole; all the stars were cold. Northward he began to see the peaks of this range, sword sharp, sheathed in ice that gleamed under the moon. Behind him waxed lightlessness.
Gallop and gallop and gallop! Now Holger heard the wild horns closer, shrilling and wailing. Never had he heard such anguis as was blown on the horns of the damned. Through the clover air he heard hoofs in the sky and the baying of immortal hounds. He leaned forward. His body swayed with Papillon's haste, his rein hand loose on the arched neck, his other hand gripped about Alianora's. (p. 213)
Recommendation: Recommended.
****
Poul Anderson, Three Hearts and Three Lions, Open Road (New York: 2018).
