So I was reading 'The Survivors', an old SF (sword and planet?) book by Marion Zimmer Bradley /Paul Edwin Zimmer.
In one paragraph there's a weapon described and...my mind just draws a blank trying to visualize the thing. Maybe someone else can shed some light on this.
Quoting the passage:
'He held out a long-bladed knife.The weapon was different from any Dane had ever seen; as he took it in his hands, trying to envision the kind of wound it would make, Dane felt a sudden revulsion for anyon who would use such a blade even in hunting let alone in combat, against any living thing.
It seemed more like a shovel than a knife, like a V in cross-section, an open equilateral triangle that gave it three sharp edges. They all drew together, at the point, in jagged, almost microscopic saw-teeth. Worse still the surfaces were pebbled, like a rasp.
It was not the clean efficiency of a killing weapon. It was a torturer's blade, designed for tearing living flesh asunder in little bits. Oh, it would kill - but the barbs, the pebbling, the dished centre of the V -these were redundant in a killing weapon. They were meant only for causing pain.
Just being unable to figure out what it looks like nags at me. I can't figure out how you give a shovel three edges. Or does he mean three separate blades are coming together at the point, rather than edges? But that wouldn't be shovel-like - one of the heroes gets stabbed with one of these later in the book, and they are described as having a fist-sized chunk of flesh scooped out...
PS if anyone else has any 'WTF does this look like!' moments from literature, please feel free to share.