Anthony Boucher praised the original edition as "a magnificent saga of the interplay of gods, demigods, faerie, heroes and men.

[8] Moorcock further declared The Broken Sword superior to Tolkien, calling it "a fast-paced doom-drenched tragedy in which human heroism, love and ambition, manipulated by amoral gods, elves and trolls, led inevitably to tragic consequences.

[3] Diana Paxson stated that reading The Broken Sword as a teen "changed [her] life", and led to her involvement in fantasy as a genre.

[10] Author Poul Anderson explained these alterations in the introduction to the 1971 edition, referring to his younger self in the third person: A generation lies between us.

This young, in many ways naive lad who bore my name could, all unwittingly, give readers a wrong impression of my work and me.