The Privilege of the Sword (Riverside, #2)

May 23, 2013 Clouds - (¿head-in-the?) rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fantasy-stand-alone, fantasy, locus-fantasy, reviewed

Following the resounding success of my Locus Quest, I faced a dilemma: which reading list to follow it up with? Variety is the spice of life, so I’ve decided to diversify and pursue six different lists simultaneously. This book falls into my LOCUS FANTASY list.

As the Locus Sci-Fi Award winners list treated me so kindly, I figure I’ll trust those same good folk to pick me some stars in their sister-list, the Locus Fantasy Award winners.

While I was working my way through the list of Locus Sci-Fi...more

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Jul 13, 2007 Res rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: sff, slash-interest, locus_poll, tiptree_award

The one where Mad Duke Alec brings his 15-year-old niece, Katherine, to the city to make a swordsman of her.

Very fine when it comes to Katherine's personal life; less successful in other areas.

Katherine is adorable, and her reactions rang very true to me; I especially liked how it felt for her to put on men's clothes for the first time, and how she gradually gained enthusiasm for her fate. Her sexual awakening was done very well, too.

I enjoyed seeing the dark side of sex and marriage; I have a...more

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Feb 22, 2011 Belcky rated it 4 of 5 stars

Recommended to Belcky by: Don't remember, but if it was you, tell me so I can thank you!

Shelves: spec-fic, historical-fic

Girl learns to be a swordswoman in a world full of swordsmen. Honestly, I expected a lot of corn n' cheese... and feminism. But I was very pleasantly surprised.

Much of the story is told from the point of view of a girl in her young teens who cherishes romantic dreams of balls and catching a suitor with a gown and a glance--and what gal can't empathize with a princess fantasy? She is offered a chance to regain her family fortunes from her spiteful uncle if she comes to the city and trains to be...more

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Feb 01, 2008 Sarah added it

Like Swordspoint, which I also loved, this novel is an extremely entertaining read that manages to provoke far more thought than I would have expected from a book that's such pure fun. I think what I loved so much about The Privilege of the Sword is that it manages to grant the reader the very real narrative pleasure of the comedy of manners and the swashbuckling revenge tale while at the same time illuminating the gender and class politics at the very foundations of these genres. This knowing a...more

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Aug 20, 2007 Darlene rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: YA, fantasy, gender, queer

Shelves: just-finished, fiction

The main character of The Privilege of the Sword (which my husband insisted on calling the Privilege of the Phallus) was a delight. Katherine was fascinating, multilayered, complex. I really liked her. She grew from an independent, loyal and sensitive girl into a fiercely independent, fiercely loyal, and dangerously armed sensitive woman. Yeah!

Some of the other characters were also intriguing -- the Duke in particular (sexy and dark, yum) -- but most of the others fell flat. Additionally, I fel...more

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Jul 30, 2007 Wealhtheow rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: mannerpunk, fantasy

The book is set a dozen or so years after Swordspoint, one of my very favorite fantasy stories. Alec Campion, the Mad Duke of Tremontaine, summons his young niece to the city. He promises to alleviate her family’s financial situation if she’ll obey his one command—she must dress only in men’s clothing and learn to fight. There are many fantasy books about young, naïve girls who learn to swordfight and defy convention, and most of them are terrible (even the Alanna series has some serious faults)...more

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Apr 26, 2008 Sean rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fantasy, glbtq2-interest

There are some things I liked very much about this book. The moment of the main character's first sexual awakening is both hilarious and yet also believable; there are moments of brilliant wit and biting sarcasm; there are scenes of such vicious depravity and cruelty that one's breath is taken away; and there are a few moments of tender love. One problem many sequels have—true sequels, in which previous characters appear in a new story—is that characters one has learned to love or hate, or who i...more

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Dec 29, 2008 Lightreads rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, romance, fantasy, disability, lgbt

About fifteen years after Swordspoint, young Katherine is sent from the country to her uncle the mad Duke, who has a nefarious but possibly brilliant plan to turn her into the first swordswoman.

Okay, so, it went something like this:

First 100 pages: Restless twitching, sighing, picking of fingernails. God, Ellen Kushner, are you seriously telling me you're letting me down in this universe twice?

Next 100 pages: Oh? Oh! Eeee! Well, why didn't you say so earlier? Oh, but you're still doing that thin...more

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Apr 06, 2013 Jefferson rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy

Imagine Jane Austen teaming up with Oscar Wilde to write a historical fantasy featuring class, gender, identity, sexuality, swords, and acting (and the pursuit of single-life rather than marriage), and you catch a glimpse of Ellen Kushner's "mannerpunk" novel The Privilege of the Sword (2006).

The novel is (partly) the coming of age story of Katherine Talbert, a plucky, good-natured, and innocent fifteen-year-old daughter of a country aristocrat family in financial straits. As the action begins,...more

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Mar 10, 2013 Jaya rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: good, series, slashreaders

SlashReaders: It's been a long while since I've read Kushner's previous two books. Though they were a couple of the first books containing 'slash' that I read. I picked up 'Swordpoint', from a used book store during a bag sale day, without even really looking at it. Needless to say I was quiet happy months later when I started reading it.

So anyway, I've held onto this book for a little while now. Just never seemed the right time to pick it up until a couple of days ago. *chuckles* It was good. I...more

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Dec 28, 2012 Julian Griffith rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is the book I waited 15 years to read.

As I've said before, Swordspoint is my favorite book in the world. This is the book that finally lets you know what happened with Richard and Alec and all the rest of them, and lets you meet a whole new set of wonderful characters besides.

Riverside has changed, in the generation since the first book. Manners have shifted, customs have evolved, and the world's definitely moving from the rough-and-tumble, late-Renaissance feel of Swordspoint to the more r...more

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Oct 27, 2012 Lainey rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is my first venture into Ellen Kushner's Riverside world and that is part of the appeal of the novel for me but most of it is due to the characters.

I honestly did not understand at first why Alec gave Katherine a swordsman's training because I never bought that reason about making her part of his guard however after his conversation with Janine, it made a lot of sense. He was giving Kat the choices and the power that was denied to her mother. He did as much for Marcus. I particularly like...more

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Aug 18, 2012 Liam rated it 3 of 5 stars

I liked it, obviously. I don't think I can not-like these books, really - although it's probably partially due to the quality of the audibooks, which change things up a little. Listening to Ellen Kushner's Riverside novels, I find myself 'wanting to be there' in that wistful way that we keep hearing fantasy or sf novels make people feel - that quality that people call escapism, in tones pejorative and otherwise.

It's not that exactly, though - I mean yes the vaguely medieval (or, what, Elizabetha...more I liked it, obviously. I don't think I can not-like these books, really - although it's probably partially due to the quality of the audibooks, which change things up a little. Listening to Ellen Kushner's Riverside novels, I find myself 'wanting to be there' in that wistful way that we keep hearing fantasy or sf novels make people feel - that quality that people call escapism, in tones pejorative and otherwise.

It's not that exactly, though - I mean yes the vaguely medieval (or, what, Elizabethan, I guess? Enlightenment, anyway what with the printing press and the parliament and the mathematics. An Enlightenment without as much of a church, which it turns out is just as shitty for the poor and almost as shitty for women as the regular Enlightenment, but less shitty for rich queer folk.) setting is fun, although probably because it's so familiar to anybody who's read even a smattering of fantasy; sometimes I confuse Riverside with Lankhmar, or Viriconium, or Ankh-Morpork. And I don't have any particular desire to be there. What I do find myself enchanted by, maybe even escaping into here and there, is how fully Kushner allows her characters to love; not in trite aphorisms, not along predictable binaries, not like someone writing a relationship down but honestly (sometimes selfishly and short-sightedly and foolishly, but honestly) reporting on characters' love. It's damned hard to do, and Kushner does it wonderfully. She understands her character's hearts better - sometimes with more affection - than they do themselves. It's George Eliot with brevity and more cross-dressing, which, it turns out, is awesome.
It's the writing around love I find myself wanting to escape to - the way her mad Duke and blind swordsman love one another, not annihilated by that love, not absorbed into one another, but loving almost unbearably all the same, or the way her swordswoman and her advisor are beginning, without much shame, to explore what they might find to be love for one another.

It's the love that I find myself a little sad to be leaving as the book closes - far more than the place.(less)

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Jul 26, 2012 Jennie rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: heroine-content, if-i-had-a-teenaged-daughter

Filling in some backstory to The Fall of the Kings, and giving us something of a sequel to Swordspoint, Kushner gives us the story of Katherine, niece to the Mad Duke Tremontain, whom readers of Swordspoint will have met.

I love good coming of age stories about determined young women, and Katherine is a great example. She comes to the city to live with her uncle expecting one kind of life. But nothing is ever straightforward around the Duke Tremontaine, she soon learns.

The Privilege of the Swor...more

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Mar 21, 2012 Cecily rated it 4 of 5 stars

Beware, folk easily suckered by bitesize chapters - I ended up finishing this at 4am. For those like me who've not encountered Kushner before, Mary Gentle's influence is reassuringly threaded throughout the piece, though never to the point of outright imitation. The plot is fast, the characters and their development solid (barring the villan) and the setting for the most part immersive in rich alternate-18th-century detail. As an examination of the use of violence in a secular patriarchy the vol...more

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Jan 07, 2012 Lisa Jensen rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: historical-fantasy

Expecting a swashbuckler, I found this much more tasty, original and complex. The compelling voice of teenage Katherine, brought to the city by her uncle, Alec Campion, the notorious "Mad Duke" of Tremontaine, to train as a swordswoman, drew me in. What kept me delighted was Kushner's fanciful metropolis of decadent high life, colorful low-life, and intellectual Bohemia, rife with political and erotic intrigue. Disputes over everything from a maiden's honor to the quality of poetry are settled b...more

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Oct 03, 2011 Clay rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: sf-fantasy

Ellen Kushner doesn't try to shoot the moon -- she’s just trying to write a fun book with just enough meat to balance the meal.

‘The Privilege of the Sword’ (Bantam Spectra, $14, 378 pages) is set in the same world as ‘Swordspoint’ and ‘The Fall of Kings’, and for the most part, it’s a pleasantly old-fashioned coming-of-age fantasy about an adolescent being brought from the country to become a swordsman (in a pre-industrial society, of course).

There are some twists, however. The first is that the...more

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Jul 26, 2011 Rambles On rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fantasy

Ellen Kushner’s Swordspoint has the distinction of being among the most intelligent and stylish fantasy novels I’ve ever read. As it happens, I have to go back to a very basic definition of “fantasy” to make that statement, since Kushner’s universe shares no characteristics with traditional fantasy save that she made it up and it is most definitely not this world.

The Privilege of the Sword falls between the short stories “The Swordsman Whose Name Was Not Death” (which is the title of a novel and...more Ellen Kushner’s Swordspoint has the distinction of being among the most intelligent and stylish fantasy novels I’ve ever read. As it happens, I have to go back to a very basic definition of “fantasy” to make that statement, since Kushner’s universe shares no characteristics with traditional fantasy save that she made it up and it is most definitely not this world.

The Privilege of the Sword falls between the short stories “The Swordsman Whose Name Was Not Death” (which is the title of a novel and play that forms a running thread through this novel) and “Red Cloak,” which come before, and “The Death of the Duke,” which closes the story of Alec and Richard. Many of the characters from Swordspoint appear, and in fact, Alec Campion, the swordsman St Vier’s mad scholar, now Duke Tremontaine, is central, as is Anthony Deverin, Lord Ferris. However, the story revolves around Katherine Talbert, Alec’s niece, who, after a years-long wrangle between the Duke and the Talberts over a small inheritance which has left her mother nearly bankrupt, is part of a settlement: Katherine will come to the city to live with the Mad Duke at House Tremontaine and will have no contact with her other family for six months. In addition, she will wear the wardrobe provided by the Duke, who will also provide lessons. In her innocence, Katherine foresees a new wardrobe of fashionable gowns, a glittering round of parties and balls, and even suitors as she has her Season in town.

What she gets are men’s clothes and lessons in swordsmanship: the Duke is a scandal in Society, no one wants to be seen associating with him except scholars, pickpockets, street urchins and worse, and the idea of a woman dressing in men’s clothes — well, that is for actresses and the like, not the nobility. Nevertheless, gritting her teeth and remembering her duty to her family, Katherine perseveres.

In the world of the intense politics of the nobility, Lord Ferris has, after returning from his exile in Arkenveldt, married money, revived his career, and now serves as Crescent Chancellor of the Council of Lords, the highest office in the land. He is still a bitter enemy of the Mad Duke, whose only involvement in the Council is to make sporadic visits to their deliberations with the sole purpose of throwing them into complete chaos, mostly because he finds their activities to be self-serving and damaging to the country as a whole.

The Privilege of the Sword, although it certainly moves briskly enough to keep a reader’s interest, is as much a novel of character as Swordspoint, or perhaps even more so, particularly graced as it is by the Mad Duke, who is admittedly one of my favorite characters from any realm of literature. Alec’s madness is of the clear-eyed sort that calls into question all of our basic assumptions. In our terms, he is as neurotic as it’s possible to be and still function, but he is also cagey, brilliant, and ruthless, and we’re never quite sure where the one leaves off and the other starts. He is also an idealist and a humanitarian, and his clear-eyed vision on the follies of privilege is the starting point for much of the satire in the novel. As he says himself, “I don’t make the rules. This annoys me, and so I comfort myself by breaking them.” Given the ways in which he breaks them, it is the rules that come into question, not Alec. He is one of the few truly creative characters in the book, and poor Ferris, whose rule-breaking is somewhat hidebound and unimaginative, is outclassed.

The humor in the book, which is more obviously funny than I’ve noticed from Kushner before, is mostly the result of Alec’s observations and reactions, which give us one gasp of shocked recognition after another, leading to those “oh, how true it is” head-shakings through the laughter.

Katherine provides another vehicle for sharply etched satire: a young woman, she begins the story with her head full of the things that occupy young women of her station, mainly finding a good match, which means land and money. It’s here that I’m reminded most of Jane Austen’s novels, with the additional virtue that Kushner’s satire is more contemporary: it becomes not just a study in class, but a dissection of our whole way of thinking, even in a supposedly post-feminist world, about men and women and what their appropriate roles are. Katherine is truly liberated, albeit reluctantly, by Alec’s insistence that she learn swordplay and wear men’s clothes — she is also free, thereby, to get into some of the kinds of trouble that young men get into, and her adventures add another layer of intrigue to the story. It’s worth noting that Katherine is the most nearly normal character I can remember Kushner coming up with — most of her people, at least the important ones, skirt the edges, but they do it in delightful ways.

There is also a touch of romance, not only a budding friendship that could be more between Katherine and Marcus, Alec’s young servant, but also a quietly played scene between Alec and Richard that reveals new dimensions to their characters, as well as their vulnerabilities and their overwhelming need for to each other.

If Swordspoint is a perfect gem, The Privilege of the Sword is the gem in its full setting: elegant, wicked, funny, intelligent, and fluent. There is, as is so often the case with truly good books, much more to this one than I can possibly discuss here. Read them both. And if you can find the short stories, read those, too.

-- Rambles(less)

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Jul 04, 2011 Cara M rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fantasy

Honestly, up until the final two chapters, this book was the best book I had ever read, which made the crashing failure at the end the most depressing thing that happened to me in a long time. The fact is, this was a story about Katharine and Artemisia. This isn't just my opinion. They had a majority of the POV parts, and their stories were the interesting arcing plot lines. I absolutely loved the story-line where they were interacting with the trashy romantic novel and the play based on it. It...more Honestly, up until the final two chapters, this book was the best book I had ever read, which made the crashing failure at the end the most depressing thing that happened to me in a long time. The fact is, this was a story about Katharine and Artemisia. This isn't just my opinion. They had a majority of the POV parts, and their stories were the interesting arcing plot lines. I absolutely loved the story-line where they were interacting with the trashy romantic novel and the play based on it. It was witty and original and realistic. They were both becoming better people, and more interesting characters. A lot of the story was about sexual awakening, about Artemisia turning away from it, and Katharine finding much more there than she ever expected, and there was clearly a potential romance building there. The scene at the brothel was repellent, and that was the final scene where the real main characters actually got to act.

--Spoilers here--

The last chapter was the real betrayal. Artemisia was entirely effaced from the story. Katharine spent the whole time grinding off with utter-nonentity-Marcus. And the duke, who may have been a main character in the previous book, but was really only a side note in this one, goes off and fixes the major problem. I nearly threw it against the wall! Even the epilogue, in which the duke and his boyfriend have taken off the the tropics, left me feeling used. Sure, the kids were left in charge, and Artemisia and Katherine actually got to be in the same room for a little while. But it just felt like they were playing dress-up as adults. The duke stole away their chance at solving their own problems, and sexual experimentation does not adulthood make.

It was really tragic, because this book was brilliant, and I wish someone had noticed in the editing process, someone had just said 'wait a second, you've broken the first rule of writing novels with young people as the main characters, they have to solve their own problems. No duke ex machina.' And of course, 'get your two main characters on the same page for once and have them make out! No stupid boys!' But that's more personal opinion and less technical.(less)

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May 30, 2011 Text Addict rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fantasy, glbt

For a person who really enjoyed Swordspoint, I sure took my time acquiring a copy of its sequel. But it was certainly worth waiting for, both in terms of publication and purchase!

And also very hard to describe. What historic epoch is this setting trying to echo? Renaissance Italy, maybe. Probably. Except for the part where the names are more English. Regardless: A decadent society, dominated by a noble class, with a tradition of dueling by proxy that in the present book is beginning to fade.

Poli...more For a person who really enjoyed Swordspoint, I sure took my time acquiring a copy of its sequel. But it was certainly worth waiting for, both in terms of publication and purchase!

And also very hard to describe. What historic epoch is this setting trying to echo? Renaissance Italy, maybe. Probably. Except for the part where the names are more English. Regardless: A decadent society, dominated by a noble class, with a tradition of dueling by proxy that in the present book is beginning to fade.

Politics. The Mad Duke Alec Tremontaine whose aims are, clearly, more ethically elevated than those of his peers – so of course he’s mad. And naturally, he has enemies who seek to destroy him.

Katherine, the niece who’s more easily manipulable than she imagines – yet become less so as her story progresses, as being forced to adopt a masculine pastime (dueling with the sword) and garb (to her own cringing embarrassment, at first) leads to the unfolding of a will and personality that had been comprehensively repressed by a culture that consigns upper-class females to marriage or penury. (Lower-class females, of course, are relegated to marriage and drudgery, or just to drudgery.)

It’s very hard to reduce a novel this complex to a simple review, particularly without spoiling most of what happens (I don’t like it when reviews do that). I must say that I believe it’s noticeably different from Swordspoint, yet in some ways seems like a logical extension of it; not surprising considering that a good two decades passed between the writing of them.

I enjoyed it immensely … the baroque politics, the gradual and largely unremarked alteration of Katherine’s personality, the unsparing depiction of the varied deleterious effects of a glorified whoredom on the women of the so-called nobility, and even the tragic yet effective reason that Alec’s lover Richard St Vier doesn’t take over the story.

There are many more characters than the three mentioned here, each worth getting to know, in the vicarious way of fiction. And of course, the world itself – of which the island of Riverside is only a small part – is very much worth seeing again.

And, once you’ve read this book (but NOT before, I warn you!), don’t neglect to go over to Tor.com and read the short story “The Man with the Knives,” which finally completes the tale of Alec and Richard. (It was only published online this past December.)(less)

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Feb 21, 2011 Lis Carey rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: f-sf

Alec Campion, the Mad Duke, is some twenty years older than in Swordspoint, but he isn’t any less a trial to his family, friends, and enemies. Dividing his time between Tremontaine House and his Riverside house, the Duke Tremontaine hosts parties ranging from the risqué to the debauched, and lives a life of dissipation.

He also quietly makes political trouble for those intent schemes that would line their own pockets at the expense of the less powerful and the less well-connected. Aside from his...more Alec Campion, the Mad Duke, is some twenty years older than in Swordspoint, but he isn’t any less a trial to his family, friends, and enemies. Dividing his time between Tremontaine House and his Riverside house, the Duke Tremontaine hosts parties ranging from the risqué to the debauched, and lives a life of dissipation.

He also quietly makes political trouble for those intent schemes that would line their own pockets at the expense of the less powerful and the less well-connected. Aside from his own affinity for the dispossessed, it doesn’t hurt at all that the principal plotter against the general good is his old enemy, Anthony Deverin, Lord Ferris. Into this political and social minefield, Tremontaine brings his niece, Katherine. With the stick of a revived lawsuit challenging his sister’s marriage settlement and the carrot of permanently settling the lawsuit, he forces his sister Janine to send her daughter to him—with an absolute ban on family contact for six months.

Katherine arrives with happy dreams of fine dresses and a Season in town. She quickly learns that she will have only boy’s clothes, and fencing lessons. Her uncle is having her trained to be his bodyguard.

As Katherine slowly learns her way around the duke’s household, the city, and a sword, she also acquires a few friends, most notably Marcus, the duke’s young assistant, and Lady Artemisia Fitz-Levi, a sweet but somewhat silly young lady of her own age, who nevertheless receives and accepts a proposal of marriage from the most eligible bachelor available—the widowed Lord Ferris.

Katherine’s not happy to discover she’ll be going to no respectable balls, wearing no dresses, and being received by practically nobody, but she does learn to enjoy swordplay and, with Marcus, trailing and investigating one of the Duke’s visitors, whom she recognizes from her one very brief attempt to visit Artemisia. Unfortunately, the next place she meets Artemisia is at the Rogues’ Ball. Katherine has come with the Duke; Artemisia with her fiancé, Lord Ferris. Lord Ferris, concerned that the flighty Artemisia might call off the betrothal that he’s counting on for reasons of his own, has taken advantage of this evening away from Artemisia’s family, friends, and chaperones to make sure she has no choice. Artemisia begs for Katherine’s help, and Katherine’s personal desire to avenge and protect her friend gets tangled up with the Duke’s personal and political enmity for Ferris. Everyone’s keeping secrets from everyone, and things start to spiral out of control.

Like Swordspoint, this is a really fine fantasy novel with not a hint of magic to be found in it anywhere.

Recommended.(less)

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Aug 22, 2010 Scott Marlowe rated it 3 of 5 stars

The short of Ellen Kushner's The Privilege of the Sword: I liked it. Though I have to say I'm split.

But, first, a brief summary:

Lady Katherine Talbert goes to live with her Uncle, the Mad Duke, who has it in for Katherine's mother (the Duke's sister) and vows to leave her alone should she commit her daughter to living with him for six months. In that time, the Mad Duke completely changes her perspective on life and her place in it, having her trained as a swords(wo)man. Once she has mastered the...more The short of Ellen Kushner's The Privilege of the Sword: I liked it. Though I have to say I'm split.

But, first, a brief summary:

Lady Katherine Talbert goes to live with her Uncle, the Mad Duke, who has it in for Katherine's mother (the Duke's sister) and vows to leave her alone should she commit her daughter to living with him for six months. In that time, the Mad Duke completely changes her perspective on life and her place in it, having her trained as a swords(wo)man. Once she has mastered the sword, she can no longer go back to the life she would have otherwise led. It's as much a coming-of-age story as it is about the sordid politics the Mad Duke has immersed himself in. In the end, it's up to Katherine, with her Uncle's help, to save the day.

Now, on to my analysis...

On one hand, it's written exceptionally well. The writing flows naturally, the prose are very concise, never once does she launch into pages and pages of backstory or what I term 'excessive exposition', which is when a writer goes overboard dealing with a character's internal emotions or conflict. She keeps the story moving along from page-to-page, never really slowing with the exception of a page here and there where she gets a little too much into the intricacies of the lives of the young female aristocrats and their oh-so-harried social lives. The book was a delight to read, especially from the perspective of trying to learn, learn, learn everything I can so I can hopefully someday find success of my own with my own writing. Chalk this one up as a great learning experience.

On the other hand, there's not enough story there for my tastes. Kushner throws in a few smaller plotlines, one of which ties into Katherine's expertise with the sword, but the main plot didn't give me enough to sink my teeth into. I understand there are two other books which came out before The Privilege of the Sword (Swordspoint, The Fall of The Kings), but neither is necessary to understand this one (I haven't read either). So, what we have is Katherine learning the sword, her using her expertise to avenge a friend's honor, and the Duke playing a sort of chess game against one of his main rivals in the city. I'm afraid even that might be pushing it as the third point only comes into play towards the end.

In summary, The Privilege of the Sword is very well written but just didn't give me enough to truly enjoy it.

This review at http://www.scottmarlowe.com/post/Book...(less)

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Apr 25, 2010 Michelle rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: historical-fantasy

3.5 stars, even.

the plot synopsis up there is pretty straight on: a crazy nobleman calls up his country cousin to attend him in the bright lights of the big city as his swashbuckler. though this is all kinds of abhorrent to a properly brought up young lady, she agrees to his terms because her family is about out of money and crazy uncle has plenty of it. a fun, fast-paced story ensues, wherein she learns to deal with wearing breeches instead of chemises, attempts to ignore her uncle's legendary...more

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Aug 22, 2012 Tyler rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites

Dear readers—

'Lady Stella,
I am not so gentle a friend that I am not filled with righteous wrath on your account. By no means hearken to the voices of those who say it was your fault, because it wasn't. Any more than it is my fault that I have to learn the sword and wear funny clothes. They are bigger than we are, and older and have more money and can make us do things we don't want to. Remember when we met at my uncle's ball? I thought you were so brave and elegant and daring, and you were, too...more

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May 27, 2012 Dorothea rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This story made me want to cheer. It's so much fun!

I was immediately hooked by the characterizations of the main character, Katherine, and her uncle, the Duke. Katherine is a very responsible, though imaginative, fifteen-year-old girl. One first meets her helping her mother with housekeeping and hoping that she'll be able to have beautiful dresses and go into society. Then there's the uncle - fearfully rich and powerful, susceptible to changing moods and to acting on impulse, behaving selfishly...more This story made me want to cheer. It's so much fun!

I was immediately hooked by the characterizations of the main character, Katherine, and her uncle, the Duke. Katherine is a very responsible, though imaginative, fifteen-year-old girl. One first meets her helping her mother with housekeeping and hoping that she'll be able to have beautiful dresses and go into society. Then there's the uncle - fearfully rich and powerful, susceptible to changing moods and to acting on impulse, behaving selfishly to those close to him but benevolently to those farther away. He decides on a whim that Katherine should come and live with him and be trained to swordfighting.

Much of the fun of this book is in the clash of Katherine's personality against the duke's will for her. She resists -- I think the early scenes in which she tries to preserve some of her femininity despite being made to dress in boys' clothes and learn a masculine trade are very well written -- but eventually finds her own ways of inhabiting her new life.

There are several secondary plots. My favorite involves another young woman, Artemisia, who's about Katherine's age. She has the social butterfly life that Katherine once dreamed of; the two girls are connected through being fans of a romantic swordfighting novel. Then, about halfway through the book, something terrible happens to Artemisia; how she and Katherine react to it drives most of the rest of the main plot.

One of the other secondary plots, involving a writer with an unhappy past and her lover who has a secret life, is interesting but not very well attached to the rest of the novel. In general, some of the writing could have used a bit more polish, and the pacing isn't quite right -- the ending, while satisfying, was rushed. However, none of this spoiled my enjoyment of the characters and the story.

It's been a while since I read Swordspoint, but I think I might have enjoyed The Privilege of the Sword even more, because of Katherine. And since my memory of Swordspoint is not clear, I can say that you don't really need to have read Swordspoint to enjoy its sequel.

Edited to add: I thought about it some more and I realized that one of the subplots doesn't really get tied up at the end -- in fact, a character suddenly discovers herself to be in an unexpected and possibly life-changing situation, and then she never appears again. I like how the ending deals with Katherine, although I still think even that is rushed, but I think the book needed another 40-50 pages to finish telling all the stories! (Or, maybe another sequel! I'd support that!)(less)

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Jun 18, 2009 Chris rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: fantasy-historical

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. The first novel I ever read by Ellen Kushner was Swordspoint. It is one of the those magical books that draws the reader in from the first line. Sadly, The Privilege of the Sword is not a good sequel.

There are several problems with this book. The first is that two of the main characters Katherine and Artemisia are very annoying. Katherine gets better towards the end, but for much of the book I wanted to smack them. Despite the fact that I know they are both very young (Katherine is 15) and despi...more

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Sep 25, 2010 Charlotte rated it 3 of 5 stars

Charming world and engaging characters make this a worthwhile read. I was expecting a standard sword-and-sorcery novel. What I wasn't expecting was a comedy of manners crossed with swashbuckling. More than that, though, this is the coming of age story for a girl learning the sword in a Georgian-like society.

Much of the story is told by Katherine. She speaks like the 15 year-old girl she is and I was pleased to find that she wasn't initially eager to don boys' clothing or lift a sword. Her growt...more

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Feb 05, 2009 Bookmarks Magazine added it

Ellen Kushner, host of public radio's Sound & Spirit, won the 1991 World Fantasy Award for Thomas the Rhymer (1990). She also wowed readers with her 1987 debut Swordspoint. She has revisited its setting in two novels: The Fall of the Kings (with Delia Sherman) (2002), and now The Privilege of the Sword. Critics admire the new novel's well-drawn characters, sharp humor, and driving plot; some even suggested starting with Swordspoint to become acquainted with the setting and the characters. Ku

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Aug 28, 2012 Emma rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fantasy, low-magic-fantasy, standalone-fantasy, awesome-fantasy-written-by-women, books-about-books

Like its predecessor, Swordspoint, The Privilege of the Sword is a fun, clever book that doesn’t quite deserve 4 stars.... but 3 would be selling it too short.

This is a 20-years-later sequel to Swordspoint; it has its own plot and protagonist and doesn’t demand that you read Swordspoint first, but it’ll make more sense if you do. Katherine, a 15-year-old from a minor noble family in the country, is summoned to the city by her uncle Alec, the Mad Duke, who’s determined to make a swordsman of her....more Like its predecessor, Swordspoint, The Privilege of the Sword is a fun, clever book that doesn’t quite deserve 4 stars.... but 3 would be selling it too short.

This is a 20-years-later sequel to Swordspoint; it has its own plot and protagonist and doesn’t demand that you read Swordspoint first, but it’ll make more sense if you do. Katherine, a 15-year-old from a minor noble family in the country, is summoned to the city by her uncle Alec, the Mad Duke, who’s determined to make a swordsman of her. The somewhat cheesy premise develops in an unconventional way: Katherine would prefer ballgowns and parties but begins to come around once she reads a trashy novel romanticizing swordsmen, and she acquires some skill through hard work but doesn’t become one of those eyeroll-inducing teen prodigies common in fantasy. (view spoiler)

Generous amounts of intrigue and adventure make this a fun novel, and I liked it better than Swordspoint primarily because Katherine is a more engaging and likeable protagonist. She’s a bit silly, but unlike with most such protagonists, her naïveté is endearing rather than annoying. She’s lively enough to be enjoyable, and has just enough depth to be realistic. The character development overall isn’t unusually deep, and there are some missteps--in particular Artemisia, who reads more like a tired parody of a shallow rich girl than an actual person, and whose relationship with Katherine makes little sense--but the cast is colorful and certainly keeps things interesting.

The book is fluidly written, and with believable dialogue. It explains more than Swordspoint, but does so without awkward info-dumps. The switching between Katherine’s first-person point of view and a roving third-person, while a bit odd, works fairly well, and Katherine’s voice is distinct from the third-person narrator’s. The setting is also enjoyable: the society is well-developed and feels realistic, and Kushner illuminates it through subtle details rather than through ostentatious invention.

The thematics are good too: there’s a smart examination of power and privilege, which feels natural and not heavy-handed. And I enjoyed the characters’ interactions with the book-turned-play, “The Swordsman Whose Name Was Not Death.” Books about books ordinarily don’t work for me, because to best enjoy them you need to share the author’s favorites; but by using an invented story, Kushner is able to capture much of what it feels like to be swept away by a book (and later see it adapted) in a more universal way, without tying it to a real-life work. The contrast between that story--apparently a melodramatic, swashbuckling romance--and this one provides food for thought, as well as several humorous moments.

The biggest problem with The Privilege of the Sword is the plot.... namely, its lack of structure. Interesting things happen, but tension never builds to a climax, and the scene that wants to be a climax happens in the protagonist's absence--Katherine doesn’t even find out about it until afterwards. Extraneous subplots take up disproportionate space; it’s unclear what Lucius and Teresa, for instance, are even doing in the book. Katherine’s romance is on the dull side, disappointing after more interesting possibilities for her are dangled early in the book. And the end is rushed; the final twist carries enough difficulties and complications to be a book unto itself, rather than simply being passed off as a happy ending.

So this is really a 3.5-star book, but I’m rounding up because it is so fun and smart. Also, I love it when authors create secondary worlds without including magical elements, and as this type of fantasy is still all too rare, I’m inclined to be generous.(less)

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Oct 15, 2010 Phoenixfalls rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy, fantasy-challenge, female-author, class, gender, young-adult, the-grass-is-always-greener, fantasy-of-manners

I loved this book. It's set a couple decades after the events of Swordspoint and does feature a number of the same characters, but it can easily stand on its own. And unlike Swordspoint I was immediately emotionally invested in Katherine, because her world is more approachable to me than St. Vier's was, full of people mostly trying to do the right thing and build happy lives. Katherine is just your average girl from the landed class, raised to run a household and attract a husband. She knows not...more I loved this book. It's set a couple decades after the events of Swordspoint and does feature a number of the same characters, but it can easily stand on its own. And unlike Swordspoint I was immediately emotionally invested in Katherine, because her world is more approachable to me than St. Vier's was, full of people mostly trying to do the right thing and build happy lives. Katherine is just your average girl from the landed class, raised to run a household and attract a husband. She knows nothing of politics and cares less; she has an eye for beauty and doesn't have an unconventional bone in her body. And in a classic fantasy of manners (or in fact any comedy of manners) twist she is sent off to the city to make her family's fortune and is immediately forced to break the most important conventions of her gender and her class.

What Kushner does absolutely brilliantly is take all the fantasy of manners tropes and subvert them, filling the book with page after page of witty, comedic banter and then hitting the reader with a line that cuts through to the real power dynamics in these sorts of stories -- the danger and the desperation inherent in the system we are so comfortable in in fantasy worlds. An example: one of the secondary characters is a pretty, vivacious girl Katherine's age going through her debut season, and she is being moody and demanding and in all ways a typical girl in this sort of story. Her brother, who wants to use the carriage, doesn't understand what's gotten into his normally sunny sister, and starts to pester her. Their mother immediately steps in and pulls him aside and asks to speak to him as an adult. This is what she says:

What happens to Artemesia this Season or the next will determine the course of her entire life from on. She is on display, everything about her: her clothes, her hair, her teeth, her laugh, her voice. . . Think of it as -- oh, I don't know, as a horse that has only one race to win. If she marries well, she will be comfortable and happy. If she makes a poor choice, or fails to attract a worthy man, the rest of her life will be a misery.

The game of courtship reduced to buying livestock, and even better is that even with this explanation the brother clearly doesn't understand exactly how little control of her own destiny his sister has, and how little margin for error there is.

But we the reader aren't allowed to forget this lesson, as Kushner weaves Artemesia's conventional life through Katherine's unconventional one, then brings the two girls together at an incredibly fraught Rogue's Ball that changes both their reputations in the City forever. From that point on the balance shifts decidedly from comedy to tragedy, though there are still little choices that Kushner makes that utterly delighted me -- for instance, Katherine and Artemesia both drawing on their reading of a Three Musketeers-esque novel to guide them through utterly unfamiliar waters. But as Kushner piles political complication on top of social complication on top of the problems inherent in talking about sex in a roughly Regency England era setting, we are forced to confront all of the ways that type of political system can leave people wide open to be victimized, and then can lead to society blaming the victims for their abusers acts.

All of which was so incredibly right, so perfectly suited to what I like and need to read, that I felt personally betrayed by the ending. In the last 20 pages Kushner took the novel back to its comedy of manners roots, waving a magic wand and making everything better, and then practically ended the story with "and they lived happily ever after." The ending of the novel made me scream in frustration, and I think I would actually recommend that people who respond the way I do to the 454 pages of the novel proper not even read the five pages of Coda.(less)

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