A Quokka Dreeds its Weird

Tiger, a male sword dancer for hire in the southern deserts with a trusty blue sword, escorts Del, a female sword dancer from the icy north with a magical pink sword, on a journey to rescue her little brother from slavery. Hijinks ensue.

First published in 1986. WOW was this first published in 1986. Here's the opening paragraph:

In my line of work, I've seen all kinds of women. Some beautiful. Some ugly. Some just plain in between. And—being neither senile nor a man with aspirations to sainthood—whenever the opportunity presented itself (with or without my encouragement), I bedded the beautiful ones (although sometimes they bedded me), passed on the ugly ones altogether (not being a greedy man), but allowed myself discourse with the in-betweeners on a fairly regular basis, not being one to look the other way when such things as discourse and other entertainments are freely offered. So the in-betweeners made out all right, too.

The fact that I actually finished this book really does credit to Roberson's way with a pulp adventure, and so does the fact that pulp action actually happens in it given the sheer page space taken up by rape, rape threats, and sexism.

Everyone in the south is sexist. Everyone in the north is also sexist, but sliiiiiighly less so because Del managed to be the only woman ever to get trained as a sword dancer there, as opposed to the south where it's never happened. Tiger (also sexist) finds it impossible to believe that a woman could a sword dancer (like a sword fighter, but awesomer) even after she demonstrates it a bajillion times until nearly the end of the book. Almost everyone Del meets threatens to rape and/or enslave her and she was raped in the backstory. About 80% of Del's total dialogue boils down to "I may be a woman, but I can do the thing."

Other than Del, there is exactly one woman in the entire book who is not a powerless wife, a whore, a slave, or raped and refrigerated in the backstory. Though possibly "refrigerated" is unfair, because the dead women are there to motivate Del, not Tiger. But still.

The depictions of the hot southern desert cultures, its cannibal tribes, its slavers, etc are basically what you would expect.

That being said, there are some pretty awesome crossing the desert sequences, including being dumped there to die without water and staggering through the sands getting horrendously sunburned, looking for oases and resting at oases, enduring a sandstorm, rescuing two adorable deadly sand tiger cubs, etc.

I read it in high school and never continued the series; all I remembered was that it had first person wiseass narration by Tiger and some good desert sequences. I re-read it after discovering yesterday that an eighth book in the series was released in 2022! Once again, I will not be continuing.