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The World of Riverside #2
The Privilege of the Sword
Audie Award Nominee, Multi-voiced Performance, 2013
Award-winning author, narrator, and screenwriter Neil Gaiman personally selected this book, and, using the tools of the Audiobook Creation Exchange (ACX), cast the narrators and produced this work for his audiobook label, Neil Gaiman Presents.
The Privilege of the Sword tells the tale of a young girl who risks everything to go live with her eccentric, litigious - and extremely rich – uncle Alec in the colorful city Kushner has created, a city where elegant nobles can mingle with raffish actors one moment and deadly swordsmen the next. Fans of Kushner's first book, Swordspoint, will already be familiar with Alec as the angry young scholar with mysterious origins, living in the city’s Riverside district with a notorious killer swordsman. Now, in The Privilege of the Sword, some years later, Alec is the Mad Duke Tremontaine, living in a mansion on the Hill, still tortured by his past….
But you don’t need to have read Swordspoint to enjoy The Privilege of the Sword. This is the story of Katherine herself, a girl who starts out imagining her life will be a sort of Jane Austen-style romance, full of dances and dresses and parties - but finds that her iconoclastic uncle has other plans. When she gets to his house in the city, the Mad Duke dresses Lady Katherine in men's clothes, gets her a first-rate tutor in swordplay, and sets her loose on a traditional world that is not really ready for her…. Nor, at first, is she ready for it.
A few words from Neil on Privilege of the Sword: "Life hands us so many moments when we hover between who we were raised to be, who the people around us are trying to make us, and who we are trying to become. In Katherine's case, that means encountering a range of people and behaviors her mother never prepared her for - including some shocking acts of violence, both physical and emotional. As one of Kushner’s most charming characters, an actress known as 'The Black Rose', sighs, 'It's all so very difficult, until you get the hang of it.'"
In this exciting new "illuminated production", the author herself reads her own work, supported by a full cast. Author Ellen Kushner is also a popular performer and National Public Radio host (Sound & Spirit). As with her previous audiobooks, the award-winning Witches of Lublin and Swordspoint, Ellen teamed up with Sue Zizza of SueMedia Productions to illuminate certain key scenes with some truly stunning sound elements, including original music commissioned just for this book (!) by composer Nathaniel Tronerud. Ellen Kushner reads all of the first-person narration from Katherine’s own point of view. In scenes where an omniscient narrator takes over, we’ve called on the amazing talents of the award-winning actor Barbara Rosenblat, a woman who's been called "the Meryl Streep of audiodrama". The cast also features Joe Hurley (Alec Campion: the Mad Duke Tremontaine), Felicia Day (Katherine Talbert), Nick Sullivan (Lord Ferris; Arthur Ghent), Katherine Kellgren (Lady Artemesia Fitz-Levi; Teresa Grey; Flavia "the Ugly Girl"), and Neil Gaiman himself (Rogues' Ball Artist)! The artwork used here is an original painting and design by Thomas Canty created exclusively for the Neil Gaiman Presents audiobook edition of The Privilege of the Sword.
Award-winning author, narrator, and screenwriter Neil Gaiman personally selected this book, and, using the tools of the Audiobook Creation Exchange (ACX), cast the narrators and produced this work for his audiobook label, Neil Gaiman Presents.
The Privilege of the Sword tells the tale of a young girl who risks everything to go live with her eccentric, litigious - and extremely rich – uncle Alec in the colorful city Kushner has created, a city where elegant nobles can mingle with raffish actors one moment and deadly swordsmen the next. Fans of Kushner's first book, Swordspoint, will already be familiar with Alec as the angry young scholar with mysterious origins, living in the city’s Riverside district with a notorious killer swordsman. Now, in The Privilege of the Sword, some years later, Alec is the Mad Duke Tremontaine, living in a mansion on the Hill, still tortured by his past….
But you don’t need to have read Swordspoint to enjoy The Privilege of the Sword. This is the story of Katherine herself, a girl who starts out imagining her life will be a sort of Jane Austen-style romance, full of dances and dresses and parties - but finds that her iconoclastic uncle has other plans. When she gets to his house in the city, the Mad Duke dresses Lady Katherine in men's clothes, gets her a first-rate tutor in swordplay, and sets her loose on a traditional world that is not really ready for her…. Nor, at first, is she ready for it.
A few words from Neil on Privilege of the Sword: "Life hands us so many moments when we hover between who we were raised to be, who the people around us are trying to make us, and who we are trying to become. In Katherine's case, that means encountering a range of people and behaviors her mother never prepared her for - including some shocking acts of violence, both physical and emotional. As one of Kushner’s most charming characters, an actress known as 'The Black Rose', sighs, 'It's all so very difficult, until you get the hang of it.'"
In this exciting new "illuminated production", the author herself reads her own work, supported by a full cast. Author Ellen Kushner is also a popular performer and National Public Radio host (Sound & Spirit). As with her previous audiobooks, the award-winning Witches of Lublin and Swordspoint, Ellen teamed up with Sue Zizza of SueMedia Productions to illuminate certain key scenes with some truly stunning sound elements, including original music commissioned just for this book (!) by composer Nathaniel Tronerud. Ellen Kushner reads all of the first-person narration from Katherine’s own point of view. In scenes where an omniscient narrator takes over, we’ve called on the amazing talents of the award-winning actor Barbara Rosenblat, a woman who's been called "the Meryl Streep of audiodrama". The cast also features Joe Hurley (Alec Campion: the Mad Duke Tremontaine), Felicia Day (Katherine Talbert), Nick Sullivan (Lord Ferris; Arthur Ghent), Katherine Kellgren (Lady Artemesia Fitz-Levi; Teresa Grey; Flavia "the Ugly Girl"), and Neil Gaiman himself (Rogues' Ball Artist)! The artwork used here is an original painting and design by Thomas Canty created exclusively for the Neil Gaiman Presents audiobook edition of The Privilege of the Sword.
16 pages, Audible Audio
First published July 25, 2006
About the author
Ellen Kushner
140 books590 followersEllen Kushner weaves together multiple careers as a writer, radio host, teacher, performer and public speaker.
A graduate of Barnard College, she also attended Bryn Mawr College, and grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. She began her career in publishing as a fiction editor in New York City, but left to write her first novel Swordspoint, which has become a cult classic, hailed as the progenitor of the “mannerpunk” (or “Fantasy of Manners”) school of urban fantasy. Swordspoint was followed by Thomas the Rhymer (World Fantasy Award and the Mythopoeic Award), and two more novels in her “Riverside” series. In 2015, Thomas the Rhymer was published in the UK as part of the Gollancz “Fantasy Masterworks” line.
In addition, her short fiction appears regularly in numerous anthologies. Her stories have been translated into a wide variety of languages, including Japanese, French, Dutch, German, Spanish, Latvian and Finnish.
Upon moving to Boston, she became a radio host for WGBH-FM. In 1996, she created Sound & Spirit, PRI’s award-winning national public radio series. With Ellen as host and writer, the program aired nationally until 2010; many of the original shows can now be heard archived online.
As a live stage performer, her solo spoken word works include Esther: the Feast of Masks, and The Golden Dreydl: a Klezmer ‘Nutcracker’ for Chanukah (with Shirim Klezmer Orchestra). In 2008, Vital Theatre commissioned her to script a full-scale theatrical version. The Klezmer Nutcracker played to sold-out audiences in New York City, with Kushner in the role of the magical Tante Miriam.
In 2012, Kushner entered the world of audiobooks, narrating and co-producing “illuminated” versions of all three of the “Riverside” novels with SueMedia Productions for Neil Gaiman Presents at Audible.com—and winning a 2013 Audie Award for Swordspoint.
Other recent projects include the urban fantasy anthology Welcome to Bordertown (co-edited with Holly Black), and The Witches of Lublin, a musical audio drama written with Elizabeth Schwartz and Yale Strom (which one Gabriel, Gracie and Wilbur Awards in 2012). In 2015 she contributed to and oversaw the creation of the online Riverside series prequel Tremontaine for Serial Box with collaborators Joel Derfner, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Malinda Lo, Racheline Maltese and Patty Bryant.
A dauntless traveler, Ellen Kushner has been a guest of honor at conventions all over the world. She regularly teaches writing at the prestigious Clarion Workshop and the Hollins University Graduate Program in Children’s Literature.
Ellen Kushner is a co-founder and past president of the Interstitial Arts Foundation, an organization supporting work that falls between genre categories. She lives in New York City with author and educator Delia Sherman, a lot of books, airplane and theater ticket stubs, and no cats whatsoever.
A graduate of Barnard College, she also attended Bryn Mawr College, and grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. She began her career in publishing as a fiction editor in New York City, but left to write her first novel Swordspoint, which has become a cult classic, hailed as the progenitor of the “mannerpunk” (or “Fantasy of Manners”) school of urban fantasy. Swordspoint was followed by Thomas the Rhymer (World Fantasy Award and the Mythopoeic Award), and two more novels in her “Riverside” series. In 2015, Thomas the Rhymer was published in the UK as part of the Gollancz “Fantasy Masterworks” line.
In addition, her short fiction appears regularly in numerous anthologies. Her stories have been translated into a wide variety of languages, including Japanese, French, Dutch, German, Spanish, Latvian and Finnish.
Upon moving to Boston, she became a radio host for WGBH-FM. In 1996, she created Sound & Spirit, PRI’s award-winning national public radio series. With Ellen as host and writer, the program aired nationally until 2010; many of the original shows can now be heard archived online.
As a live stage performer, her solo spoken word works include Esther: the Feast of Masks, and The Golden Dreydl: a Klezmer ‘Nutcracker’ for Chanukah (with Shirim Klezmer Orchestra). In 2008, Vital Theatre commissioned her to script a full-scale theatrical version. The Klezmer Nutcracker played to sold-out audiences in New York City, with Kushner in the role of the magical Tante Miriam.
In 2012, Kushner entered the world of audiobooks, narrating and co-producing “illuminated” versions of all three of the “Riverside” novels with SueMedia Productions for Neil Gaiman Presents at Audible.com—and winning a 2013 Audie Award for Swordspoint.
Other recent projects include the urban fantasy anthology Welcome to Bordertown (co-edited with Holly Black), and The Witches of Lublin, a musical audio drama written with Elizabeth Schwartz and Yale Strom (which one Gabriel, Gracie and Wilbur Awards in 2012). In 2015 she contributed to and oversaw the creation of the online Riverside series prequel Tremontaine for Serial Box with collaborators Joel Derfner, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Malinda Lo, Racheline Maltese and Patty Bryant.
A dauntless traveler, Ellen Kushner has been a guest of honor at conventions all over the world. She regularly teaches writing at the prestigious Clarion Workshop and the Hollins University Graduate Program in Children’s Literature.
Ellen Kushner is a co-founder and past president of the Interstitial Arts Foundation, an organization supporting work that falls between genre categories. She lives in New York City with author and educator Delia Sherman, a lot of books, airplane and theater ticket stubs, and no cats whatsoever.
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January 8, 2016readers who have not encountered the previous books set in Kushner's Riverside could read this one first with no confusion or diminishment of pleasure. One doesn't need to know the characters' back (or forward) history; as Katherine encounters them, we do too, through her descriptions both trenchant and humane. (Though it must be said certain lines and situations inevitably will resonate more with readers familiar with the previous Riverside stories.)
Kushner begins with sixteen-year-old Katherine, whose uncle, the Mad Duke Tremontaine, offers, out of nowhere, to cancel all debts and even to help the family out of poverty if Katherine consents to live with him for six months and train with the sword. Of course she's going to take the offer—despite the fact that young ladies do not have anything to do with swords. Here are a couple of lines from the opening graf, and what swashbuckler among us can resist?
…This was before I had ever been to the city. I had never been in a duel, or held a sword myself. I had never kissed anyone, or had anyone try to kill me, or worn a velvet cloak.
And then, for the readers who know the story, that graf finishes:
I had certainly never met my uncle the Mad Duke. Once I met him, much was explained. [pause for guffaw from those who know what that means]
Katherine does indeed learn to handle a sword. But you absolutely cannot predict what is going to happen while she goes about it. Meanwhile Katherine's first-person storyline interweaves with other points of view to make a delightful whole that covers a surprising spectrum of situations and emotions. There just isn't a note wrong anywhere, the characters are vivid, the humor a splash of light amid plenty of tense moments, introspective ones, sad ones, and some with exquisite poignance.
Two observations of things that particularly impressed me: one, the true-to-life 'secret' lives of school girls who are mostly shut away from the world for their own good. These girls read and reread romantic novels in order to decode the world—novels chosen in hopes that the glorious landscape, passionate heroes (especially heroic villains) and noble emotions found there will indeed prove to be what the girls encounter when at last given the chance to take their place in the world. Their language is a private language, the characters in the romances so well known, so endlessly discussed, they prance alongside the realtime story as dream shades.
This so resonated with my own teen experience, when encountering others who adored Man from U.N.C.L.E and Lord of the Rings and Georgette Heyer and Star Trek; what's more, this phenomenon resonates right back through literary letters and fiction clear to Charlotte Lennox who, in the 1750s, gave us The Female Quixote about a girl who raised herself on romance. As well as Jane Austen's far more fun iteration of the same plot in Northanger Abbey.
The second thing that impressed me was how, as the young people encountered the worst aspects of the world—and indeed did not always escape them—they could observe, comprehend, and still retain their own integrity. How very refreshing—and how rare, unfortunately, in far too much fiction.
Kushner begins with sixteen-year-old Katherine, whose uncle, the Mad Duke Tremontaine, offers, out of nowhere, to cancel all debts and even to help the family out of poverty if Katherine consents to live with him for six months and train with the sword. Of course she's going to take the offer—despite the fact that young ladies do not have anything to do with swords. Here are a couple of lines from the opening graf, and what swashbuckler among us can resist?
…This was before I had ever been to the city. I had never been in a duel, or held a sword myself. I had never kissed anyone, or had anyone try to kill me, or worn a velvet cloak.
And then, for the readers who know the story, that graf finishes:
I had certainly never met my uncle the Mad Duke. Once I met him, much was explained. [pause for guffaw from those who know what that means]
Katherine does indeed learn to handle a sword. But you absolutely cannot predict what is going to happen while she goes about it. Meanwhile Katherine's first-person storyline interweaves with other points of view to make a delightful whole that covers a surprising spectrum of situations and emotions. There just isn't a note wrong anywhere, the characters are vivid, the humor a splash of light amid plenty of tense moments, introspective ones, sad ones, and some with exquisite poignance.
Two observations of things that particularly impressed me: one, the true-to-life 'secret' lives of school girls who are mostly shut away from the world for their own good. These girls read and reread romantic novels in order to decode the world—novels chosen in hopes that the glorious landscape, passionate heroes (especially heroic villains) and noble emotions found there will indeed prove to be what the girls encounter when at last given the chance to take their place in the world. Their language is a private language, the characters in the romances so well known, so endlessly discussed, they prance alongside the realtime story as dream shades.
This so resonated with my own teen experience, when encountering others who adored Man from U.N.C.L.E and Lord of the Rings and Georgette Heyer and Star Trek; what's more, this phenomenon resonates right back through literary letters and fiction clear to Charlotte Lennox who, in the 1750s, gave us The Female Quixote about a girl who raised herself on romance. As well as Jane Austen's far more fun iteration of the same plot in Northanger Abbey.
The second thing that impressed me was how, as the young people encountered the worst aspects of the world—and indeed did not always escape them—they could observe, comprehend, and still retain their own integrity. How very refreshing—and how rare, unfortunately, in far too much fiction.
October 11, 2023
Halloween Bingo 2023
You'd never know it from the first few pages of this book, but it quickly becomes a swashbuckling good time. Lady Katherine is plucked from the family's country estate, where she has been destined for a marriage to secure funds to maintain their farming endeavors. Her uncle, the Mad Duke, will restore their family finances if Katherine will come to the city and learn to be a Swordsman.
Kat is more than reluctant. She is horrified. What does he mean, she must dress like a man? Why can't she wear dresses when not actively sword fighting? She is slowly won over as she gains skill. It turns out that she has a competitive nature. But she is so naïve about sexuality and relationships—her beliefs are derived from romantic literature.
The Mad Duke has things to do, places to go, people to screw. He alternately ignores and manipulates Katherine, mostly the former. She essentially finds her own way within the parameters that her uncle has laid down. From time to time, the anticipation of what was coming required me to set down the book and go do something to deal with my own anxiety.
I have enjoyed Kushner's world of Riverside with its rather Victorian society and her rebellious characters who push at its boundaries.
This book was perfect for the Sword and Sorcery square on my bingo card, with all the sword play in the fantasy world of Riverside. It was also Book number 508 of my Science Fiction and Fantasy Reading Project.
You'd never know it from the first few pages of this book, but it quickly becomes a swashbuckling good time. Lady Katherine is plucked from the family's country estate, where she has been destined for a marriage to secure funds to maintain their farming endeavors. Her uncle, the Mad Duke, will restore their family finances if Katherine will come to the city and learn to be a Swordsman.
Kat is more than reluctant. She is horrified. What does he mean, she must dress like a man? Why can't she wear dresses when not actively sword fighting? She is slowly won over as she gains skill. It turns out that she has a competitive nature. But she is so naïve about sexuality and relationships—her beliefs are derived from romantic literature.
The Mad Duke has things to do, places to go, people to screw. He alternately ignores and manipulates Katherine, mostly the former. She essentially finds her own way within the parameters that her uncle has laid down. From time to time, the anticipation of what was coming required me to set down the book and go do something to deal with my own anxiety.
I have enjoyed Kushner's world of Riverside with its rather Victorian society and her rebellious characters who push at its boundaries.
This book was perfect for the Sword and Sorcery square on my bingo card, with all the sword play in the fantasy world of Riverside. It was also Book number 508 of my Science Fiction and Fantasy Reading Project.
July 30, 2007
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). This is not one of those books. Kate is initially far from pleased at her new situation, and the gradual growth of her appreciation for dueling is believable. The story starts frothily, with characters new and old whipping about, all having a grand old time double-crossing each other. But as it progresses, Privilege of the Sword becomes more about intimate power struggles and the right to personal freedom than just political infighting. Kate’s character also deepens, and while she retains a silly streak (she has a tendency to romanticize) she becomes a very likeable character. In the background of her story are Alec and Richard St. Vier, the main characters of Swordspoint; hearing hints of their story percolate up is both teasing and satisfying. The very end is a little too pat for my tastes, but overall I loved this book almost as much as its prequel.
August 24, 2024
«El privilegio de la espada» nos cuenta una nueva historia ambientada en la Ribera, tenemos una nueva protagonista pero volvemos al universo y personajes de «A punta de espada». Como secuela pocos libros me han resultado tan satisfactorios.
Los acontecimientos tienen lugar 15 años después del final del primer libro y los veremos desde el punto de vista de la sobrina de Alec. Y OH DIOS MÍO, ¡menudo disfrute es! Adictiva y extrañamente acogedora, es una novela mucho menos oscura que la primera parte de esta trilogía, quizás por su luminosa protagonista, Katherine (una de las pocas protagonistas de 16 años que puedo decir que ADORO), que por culpa de las deudas de su familia debe aprender el negocio de la espada y soportar las absurdas (e inapropiadas) normas del Duque Loco.
«El privilegio de la espada» a fin de cuentas es una historia de espadachines, nobles, bailes, obras de teatro, engaños, affaires y personajes que terminarás amando con locura.
Un libro que quizás no sea tan redondo como el primero pero que parece hecho para mí en todos los aspectos y que he disfrutado tanto que no puedo darle menos de sus 5 estrellazas más que merecidas.
Pd. La segunda de las cuatro que componen la novela (Highcombe) es una obra de arte en sí misma que me hizo muy feliz.
Los acontecimientos tienen lugar 15 años después del final del primer libro y los veremos desde el punto de vista de la sobrina de Alec. Y OH DIOS MÍO, ¡menudo disfrute es! Adictiva y extrañamente acogedora, es una novela mucho menos oscura que la primera parte de esta trilogía, quizás por su luminosa protagonista, Katherine (una de las pocas protagonistas de 16 años que puedo decir que ADORO), que por culpa de las deudas de su familia debe aprender el negocio de la espada y soportar las absurdas (e inapropiadas) normas del Duque Loco.
«El privilegio de la espada» a fin de cuentas es una historia de espadachines, nobles, bailes, obras de teatro, engaños, affaires y personajes que terminarás amando con locura.
Un libro que quizás no sea tan redondo como el primero pero que parece hecho para mí en todos los aspectos y que he disfrutado tanto que no puedo darle menos de sus 5 estrellazas más que merecidas.
Pd. La segunda de las cuatro que componen la novela (Highcombe) es una obra de arte en sí misma que me hizo muy feliz.
December 29, 2008
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 thing where you think all your other characters in addition to Richard and Alek are interesting, and you're still wrong, sigh.
Last half of the book: Clever, clever book! Oh, Katherine! Oh, Alek! You are all marvelous and delightful and I love you to distraction! I take it all back – I didn't mean a word of it. Well, except for the part about the first 100 pages being boring, 'cause they kinda are. Sorry!
So, you know, forge ahead. Because this book made me so, so happy. There's clever cross-dressing and power discourse and privilege discourse and tragedy and beauty. This is a book about powerlessness and self-determination with a female protagonist who dresses as a man and becomes a swordswoman, and it's not really about gender. It's about people, and for that alone I could love it.
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 thing where you think all your other characters in addition to Richard and Alek are interesting, and you're still wrong, sigh.
Last half of the book: Clever, clever book! Oh, Katherine! Oh, Alek! You are all marvelous and delightful and I love you to distraction! I take it all back – I didn't mean a word of it. Well, except for the part about the first 100 pages being boring, 'cause they kinda are. Sorry!
So, you know, forge ahead. Because this book made me so, so happy. There's clever cross-dressing and power discourse and privilege discourse and tragedy and beauty. This is a book about powerlessness and self-determination with a female protagonist who dresses as a man and becomes a swordswoman, and it's not really about gender. It's about people, and for that alone I could love it.
February 8, 2019
I have to begin by emphasizing just how much I wanted to love this book.
I have a whole sordid story of how I was a fan of its predecessor, Swordspoint, so much so that I bought this book the day it was released. How excited I was to see this author write a girl's story, which I infinitely prefer. How I tried and failed to get through it for over a decade. How bewildered I was at the extremes of boredom and emotional over-investment the book sent me into, and how I put it aside each time thinking something was off, I just wasn't getting it, not the way I wanted to and (I was sure) not the way its author intended.
Recently I read a review here on Goodreads which claims Privilege reads like a fanfic for a canon the reader is unfamiliar with, and everything clicked into place. I finished off the book in two sessions.
And now I'm ready to be well and truly angry about it.
Privilege is fanfic. And I'm angry not because of a poor opinion of fanfic, but because Katherine deserves better as its (supposed) heroine. And I sure fucking deserve better as its reader and someone who was prepared to fall in love with it as its own story.
The book tricks you into thinking it's about Katherine. It opens with her, and the first hundred pages or so focus on her. The blurb on the back talks about her story as a young woman trained to the sword.
Don't fall for it. This book is about Alec and Richard, though mostly Alec. Again.
I don't mean the book starts with Katherine and then moves to the pair who dominated Swordspoint. I mean although it is through Katherine's eyes that we see the bulk of the story, Katherine's journey to swordswoman that gives the book its spine, it isn't about Katherine.
Despite so much of her first-person voice guiding the narrative, Katherine herself is barely a character. She's more of a window-pane through which we witness the grand conclusions of someone else's life and romance. But when it comes to her own emotional world? Next to nothing. Katherine has no agency -- all her big decisions are made for her by Alec, her uncle. And while passive characters don't doom a book, there's no... what does Katherine want? Truly? She acquiesces to learning the sword and dressing like a boy. Why? She finds the whole thing annoying at first, and then gets used to it. There's a confrontation with her mother, later, who wants to "save" her and bring Katherine back to the country -- Katherine doesn't want to go. Why not? We don't really know. She enjoys her instruction at this point, and she's a fan of a book about a swordsman, but... is that it? How has she changed as a character since coming to the city? What are her new goals and purpose, and what made her discard the old ones?
None of this is important, because Katherine is not important. Not really. Even the big conflict of the book, the long-awaited standoff with the bad guy and accompanying emotional climax, isn't with her. (It's with Alec.) She doesn't get any emotional climax at all: even the scene of her big duel is written from a different character's perspective. Even her happy ending isn't written from her perspective! We aren't invited to experience it with her, because she's not the reason the author wrote this book.
Alec is.
I'm bitter. (As if you can't tell.) And I'm angry about it. Because I love Alec.
But this book did its damnedest to make me hate him by sacrificing its female characters, one after the other after the other, in order to better tell his story.
It's not just Katherine. (Although if you told me Kushner originally wrote the third-person sections and someone, either an editor or a first reader, told her to flesh it out with Katherine's first-person accounts much later in order to try and make this story work on its own... it would explain a lot.) There isn't a single female character of import whose existence isn't contingent on either giving us a better perspective on Alec as a person, or providing him with appropriate inspiration/deterrent. Shall we go through them?
1. Flavia. If you don't remember her, that's because she's rarely referred to by name; she's Alex's non-sexual companion, hugely intellectual and his connection back to his mathematical path, and the book calls her The Ugly Girl (capitals included). Oh, wow, an attractive man's only non-sexual relationship with a woman (who isn't family) is with an ugly woman? Only the notoriously ugly woman is renowned for her rational intelligence, the man's intellectual equal? Gee, I've never seen that dynamic before. Anyway, Flavia's purpose is to provide Alex with dialogues that expose his motives, and to show how mean the antagonist is by becoming a target. Don't worry, she gets a happy ending, not that we were ever really given a chance to invest in her happiness.
2. Janine, Alec's sister and Katherine's mother. But mostly Alec's sister. She's there to explain why Alec would force a noble-born girl into learning the sword: he suffered such awful trauma, you see, watching his sister forced into a marriage she didn't want, and he's making sure her daughter will never suffer that fate. (It's it so awful, how he suffered in the wake of her marriage. She got used to it, though, so now she's just as bad as their parents.) Katherine has some vague feelings about her mother virtually selling her off to her uncle, but are they resolved? Do they matter? No, Alec and Janine have a big emotional fight and a night of drinking off-screen, and she never comes up in the book again.
3. Rose, an actress. Rose looks promising at first: she's independent, she's involved with another woman in her troupe, and for a hot second we think she might also become involved with Katherine. (More on that later). Oh, psych, none of that matters as much as the fact she's also sleeping with Alec -- which, get this, she started doing because she remembers his doomed romance with Richard and feels sorry for him, so not even because of how it might benefit her, oh no, her pussy is there to burnish Alec's Tragic Hero crown -- and is therefore another weapon the antagonist uses against him. Oh, and she ends up
4. Artemisia, a young noblewoman. Artemisia is at the center of this book almost as much as Katherine, but her emotional world is given the same short shrift. The two of them meet at a party and talk for five minutes. The fact that Artemisia later laughs at Katherine in boy's clothing, causing Katherine to retreat into isolation, is apparently not enough to sever this terribly deep and lasting connection, as she engages in a dangerous duel for Atemisia's sake. Katherine also wrote letters, never returned because Artemisia's mother destroyed them; Katherine doesn't know this is why she never got a response, but also doesn't hold a grudge. Thank god, or how would the plot have moved forward?
We're introduced to Artemisia as a delightfully frivolous child who apparently thinks of nothing but parties, dresses, and beaus. She becomes engaged, to her delight, to Lord Ferris. This is where the fact the book is fanfiction begins to show. As observed in the book thus far, Ferris is an unknown -- a lot older than Artemisia, but that isn't unusual for the kind of society Kushner is emulating. It's only if you've read Swordspoint that you begin to hear the theme to Jaws.
Our fears are confirmed when Ferris
Artemisia adds nothing to the narrative besides helping to draw Alec into direct conflict with Ferris again. Even her friendship with Katherine is slight, despite their reunion: the only thing they have in common seems to be a shared love for a popular book, and they quote lines at each other to bond. (More on that later.) There seems to be an attempt at fixing this when Katherine writes and
5. Katherine. Obviously we've been over how the narrative fails her, but then it occurs to me: why even have the conceit of a rare female swordswoman driving the plot of your book, if you couldn't care less about how that affects her, how it changes her?
Then I realized Katherine's purpose is to bring Alec back to Richard. Because who else will teach your unorthodox student but the most unorthodox (and best) swordsman who ever lived?
To be fair, the sections with Richard are the best in the book. Oh, Katherine matters as little there as elsewhere. (She loves and admires him instantly, and that's their story, apparently because the author can't conceive of anyone with sense feeling any other way about Richard.) But the realizations Richard's appearance brings to the book -- -- have actual emotional impact. If you've read Swordspoint these sections are poetic, and passionate, and deeply meaningful.
If you've read Swordspoint.
Unsurprisingly while Alec and Richard's romance shines, Katherine is again let down. I held out hopes here -- I know Kushner is a queer writer who writes queer romances, and with a female protagonist I had my fingers crossed.
There's something. It's not a romance.
In short: Katherine's relationships with other women are prompted by almost irresistible physical desire, and begin and end with that. Her relationship with a man is a relationship. If you're looking for satisfying queer representation, look elsewhere.
I haven't even touched on the book's treatment of sex work, yet.
To finish up (yes, I know, hurrah) there's this... attempt. At capturing the idea of modern fandom culture within the distinctly non-modern setting of the book. Maybe because Kushner realized she was writing fanfic? Maybe because by the early aughts online fandom was in full force and authors, aware of their own fanbases, started to play with meta conceits? Katherine and Atemisia both fall in love with a particular novel, they relate to each other almost exclusively through allusions to its dialogue and characters, they see it adapted for the stage, etc. But overall it's an extremely condescending view of fandom: Artemisia's own mother used to be a fan and knows the book is "trash" now that she's older and wiser, Katherine tries to share it with Marcus but his abstention means it's full of girl cooties. If I wanted that I'd re-read Gibson's Idoru, which still manages to have a better grasp on fandom friendships and the freedom to self-create identity within fandom spaces. If I wanted to truly see an author experiment with fandom culture and how it interacts with her own, intensely lauded work, I'd re-read Lee's Metallic Love. Both of these came out before Privilege and do more to interrogate fandom and fandom's appeal to young women in particular, so I see no excuse for the slapdash approach of this book.
Let me end this review as I began: in touching on the fact there is a long history to my passionate reaction to this book. A history of desperate searching through my library's scifi and fantasy shelves, from a very young age, for books that let me see girls like myself in roles that didn't make me hate myself. Something besides the passive love interest, the convenient-for-plot-reasons sister, or the ugly and sexually-unthreatening friend. Maybe the women didn't have to be central, but please, please there be female characters who embody the idea -- as voiced on a television episode that aired a year before this book's publication -- that "it's not a fucking woman's job to be consumed and invaded and spat out so that some fucking man can evolve." Let me not have to endure one more story where queer sexuality is a meaningless side adventure, to be abandoned when the safe and secure heterosexual alternative comes along.
Kushner's work used to be one of the exceptions which proved the rule was worth flaunting, and that exceptions were forth fighting and striving for. If Kushner now only wants to write fanfic, I say let her. It's the attempt to spin it as something else which leaves such an awful taste in my mouth.
The worst part of this book? Having been so brutally exposed to Kusher's authorial flaws, I may never be able to really enjoy Swordspoint again.
ONE STAR: I regret it.
I have a whole sordid story of how I was a fan of its predecessor, Swordspoint, so much so that I bought this book the day it was released. How excited I was to see this author write a girl's story, which I infinitely prefer. How I tried and failed to get through it for over a decade. How bewildered I was at the extremes of boredom and emotional over-investment the book sent me into, and how I put it aside each time thinking something was off, I just wasn't getting it, not the way I wanted to and (I was sure) not the way its author intended.
Recently I read a review here on Goodreads which claims Privilege reads like a fanfic for a canon the reader is unfamiliar with, and everything clicked into place. I finished off the book in two sessions.
And now I'm ready to be well and truly angry about it.
Privilege is fanfic. And I'm angry not because of a poor opinion of fanfic, but because Katherine deserves better as its (supposed) heroine. And I sure fucking deserve better as its reader and someone who was prepared to fall in love with it as its own story.
The book tricks you into thinking it's about Katherine. It opens with her, and the first hundred pages or so focus on her. The blurb on the back talks about her story as a young woman trained to the sword.
Don't fall for it. This book is about Alec and Richard, though mostly Alec. Again.
I don't mean the book starts with Katherine and then moves to the pair who dominated Swordspoint. I mean although it is through Katherine's eyes that we see the bulk of the story, Katherine's journey to swordswoman that gives the book its spine, it isn't about Katherine.
Despite so much of her first-person voice guiding the narrative, Katherine herself is barely a character. She's more of a window-pane through which we witness the grand conclusions of someone else's life and romance. But when it comes to her own emotional world? Next to nothing. Katherine has no agency -- all her big decisions are made for her by Alec, her uncle. And while passive characters don't doom a book, there's no... what does Katherine want? Truly? She acquiesces to learning the sword and dressing like a boy. Why? She finds the whole thing annoying at first, and then gets used to it. There's a confrontation with her mother, later, who wants to "save" her and bring Katherine back to the country -- Katherine doesn't want to go. Why not? We don't really know. She enjoys her instruction at this point, and she's a fan of a book about a swordsman, but... is that it? How has she changed as a character since coming to the city? What are her new goals and purpose, and what made her discard the old ones?
None of this is important, because Katherine is not important. Not really. Even the big conflict of the book, the long-awaited standoff with the bad guy and accompanying emotional climax, isn't with her. (It's with Alec.) She doesn't get any emotional climax at all: even the scene of her big duel is written from a different character's perspective. Even her happy ending isn't written from her perspective! We aren't invited to experience it with her, because she's not the reason the author wrote this book.
Alec is.
I'm bitter. (As if you can't tell.) And I'm angry about it. Because I love Alec.
But this book did its damnedest to make me hate him by sacrificing its female characters, one after the other after the other, in order to better tell his story.
It's not just Katherine. (Although if you told me Kushner originally wrote the third-person sections and someone, either an editor or a first reader, told her to flesh it out with Katherine's first-person accounts much later in order to try and make this story work on its own... it would explain a lot.) There isn't a single female character of import whose existence isn't contingent on either giving us a better perspective on Alec as a person, or providing him with appropriate inspiration/deterrent. Shall we go through them?
1. Flavia. If you don't remember her, that's because she's rarely referred to by name; she's Alex's non-sexual companion, hugely intellectual and his connection back to his mathematical path, and the book calls her The Ugly Girl (capitals included). Oh, wow, an attractive man's only non-sexual relationship with a woman (who isn't family) is with an ugly woman? Only the notoriously ugly woman is renowned for her rational intelligence, the man's intellectual equal? Gee, I've never seen that dynamic before. Anyway, Flavia's purpose is to provide Alex with dialogues that expose his motives, and to show how mean the antagonist is by becoming a target. Don't worry, she gets a happy ending, not that we were ever really given a chance to invest in her happiness.
2. Janine, Alec's sister and Katherine's mother. But mostly Alec's sister. She's there to explain why Alec would force a noble-born girl into learning the sword: he suffered such awful trauma, you see, watching his sister forced into a marriage she didn't want, and he's making sure her daughter will never suffer that fate. (It's it so awful, how he suffered in the wake of her marriage. She got used to it, though, so now she's just as bad as their parents.) Katherine has some vague feelings about her mother virtually selling her off to her uncle, but are they resolved? Do they matter? No, Alec and Janine have a big emotional fight and a night of drinking off-screen, and she never comes up in the book again.
3. Rose, an actress. Rose looks promising at first: she's independent, she's involved with another woman in her troupe, and for a hot second we think she might also become involved with Katherine. (More on that later). Oh, psych, none of that matters as much as the fact she's also sleeping with Alec -- which, get this, she started doing because she remembers his doomed romance with Richard and feels sorry for him, so not even because of how it might benefit her, oh no, her pussy is there to burnish Alec's Tragic Hero crown -- and is therefore another weapon the antagonist uses against him. Oh, and she ends up
4. Artemisia, a young noblewoman. Artemisia is at the center of this book almost as much as Katherine, but her emotional world is given the same short shrift. The two of them meet at a party and talk for five minutes. The fact that Artemisia later laughs at Katherine in boy's clothing, causing Katherine to retreat into isolation, is apparently not enough to sever this terribly deep and lasting connection, as she engages in a dangerous duel for Atemisia's sake. Katherine also wrote letters, never returned because Artemisia's mother destroyed them; Katherine doesn't know this is why she never got a response, but also doesn't hold a grudge. Thank god, or how would the plot have moved forward?
We're introduced to Artemisia as a delightfully frivolous child who apparently thinks of nothing but parties, dresses, and beaus. She becomes engaged, to her delight, to Lord Ferris. This is where the fact the book is fanfiction begins to show. As observed in the book thus far, Ferris is an unknown -- a lot older than Artemisia, but that isn't unusual for the kind of society Kushner is emulating. It's only if you've read Swordspoint that you begin to hear the theme to Jaws.
Our fears are confirmed when Ferris
Artemisia adds nothing to the narrative besides helping to draw Alec into direct conflict with Ferris again. Even her friendship with Katherine is slight, despite their reunion: the only thing they have in common seems to be a shared love for a popular book, and they quote lines at each other to bond. (More on that later.) There seems to be an attempt at fixing this when Katherine writes and
5. Katherine. Obviously we've been over how the narrative fails her, but then it occurs to me: why even have the conceit of a rare female swordswoman driving the plot of your book, if you couldn't care less about how that affects her, how it changes her?
Then I realized Katherine's purpose is to bring Alec back to Richard. Because who else will teach your unorthodox student but the most unorthodox (and best) swordsman who ever lived?
To be fair, the sections with Richard are the best in the book. Oh, Katherine matters as little there as elsewhere. (She loves and admires him instantly, and that's their story, apparently because the author can't conceive of anyone with sense feeling any other way about Richard.) But the realizations Richard's appearance brings to the book -- -- have actual emotional impact. If you've read Swordspoint these sections are poetic, and passionate, and deeply meaningful.
If you've read Swordspoint.
Unsurprisingly while Alec and Richard's romance shines, Katherine is again let down. I held out hopes here -- I know Kushner is a queer writer who writes queer romances, and with a female protagonist I had my fingers crossed.
There's something. It's not a romance.
In short: Katherine's relationships with other women are prompted by almost irresistible physical desire, and begin and end with that. Her relationship with a man is a relationship. If you're looking for satisfying queer representation, look elsewhere.
I haven't even touched on the book's treatment of sex work, yet.
To finish up (yes, I know, hurrah) there's this... attempt. At capturing the idea of modern fandom culture within the distinctly non-modern setting of the book. Maybe because Kushner realized she was writing fanfic? Maybe because by the early aughts online fandom was in full force and authors, aware of their own fanbases, started to play with meta conceits? Katherine and Atemisia both fall in love with a particular novel, they relate to each other almost exclusively through allusions to its dialogue and characters, they see it adapted for the stage, etc. But overall it's an extremely condescending view of fandom: Artemisia's own mother used to be a fan and knows the book is "trash" now that she's older and wiser, Katherine tries to share it with Marcus but his abstention means it's full of girl cooties. If I wanted that I'd re-read Gibson's Idoru, which still manages to have a better grasp on fandom friendships and the freedom to self-create identity within fandom spaces. If I wanted to truly see an author experiment with fandom culture and how it interacts with her own, intensely lauded work, I'd re-read Lee's Metallic Love. Both of these came out before Privilege and do more to interrogate fandom and fandom's appeal to young women in particular, so I see no excuse for the slapdash approach of this book.
Let me end this review as I began: in touching on the fact there is a long history to my passionate reaction to this book. A history of desperate searching through my library's scifi and fantasy shelves, from a very young age, for books that let me see girls like myself in roles that didn't make me hate myself. Something besides the passive love interest, the convenient-for-plot-reasons sister, or the ugly and sexually-unthreatening friend. Maybe the women didn't have to be central, but please, please there be female characters who embody the idea -- as voiced on a television episode that aired a year before this book's publication -- that "it's not a fucking woman's job to be consumed and invaded and spat out so that some fucking man can evolve." Let me not have to endure one more story where queer sexuality is a meaningless side adventure, to be abandoned when the safe and secure heterosexual alternative comes along.
Kushner's work used to be one of the exceptions which proved the rule was worth flaunting, and that exceptions were forth fighting and striving for. If Kushner now only wants to write fanfic, I say let her. It's the attempt to spin it as something else which leaves such an awful taste in my mouth.
The worst part of this book? Having been so brutally exposed to Kusher's authorial flaws, I may never be able to really enjoy Swordspoint again.
ONE STAR: I regret it.
July 13, 2007
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 feeling that the more Regency romances you've read and enjoyed, the more chilling it is to see the other side. But the book has a complex view of sexuality and fantasy -- repeatedly it shows the same act with radically different meanings for the participants.
It was nice to have a tiny bit of backstory on Alec, and nice to see that the author is aware that he's insane; sometimes I've wondered. I'm still not clear, though, on what he was doing by making a swordsman of Katherine; was it only to fit her for the family role, or was there some larger purpose?
I don't know what Flavia was doing there; for all the long-term significance she has, she might as well have been left out. And I object to Rose's plot being dropped at such a critical point, though of course that's setting up for a sequel.
And the Ferris plot! To have it resolved in so blunt and hasty a fashion was a real letdown for me, and I also don't believe that Alec would have been able to walk away from such a thing with so few consequences to himself and his family. (The ending was hasty in general; I felt that two or three chapters had been left out, but maybe that's because the book was Katherine's but the climax was Alec's, so we never really got a climax for Katherine's story.)
(2007 Locus poll: #1 fantasy.)
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 feeling that the more Regency romances you've read and enjoyed, the more chilling it is to see the other side. But the book has a complex view of sexuality and fantasy -- repeatedly it shows the same act with radically different meanings for the participants.
It was nice to have a tiny bit of backstory on Alec, and nice to see that the author is aware that he's insane; sometimes I've wondered. I'm still not clear, though, on what he was doing by making a swordsman of Katherine; was it only to fit her for the family role, or was there some larger purpose?
I don't know what Flavia was doing there; for all the long-term significance she has, she might as well have been left out. And I object to Rose's plot being dropped at such a critical point, though of course that's setting up for a sequel.
And the Ferris plot! To have it resolved in so blunt and hasty a fashion was a real letdown for me, and I also don't believe that Alec would have been able to walk away from such a thing with so few consequences to himself and his family. (The ending was hasty in general; I felt that two or three chapters had been left out, but maybe that's because the book was Katherine's but the climax was Alec's, so we never really got a climax for Katherine's story.)
(2007 Locus poll: #1 fantasy.)
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June 5, 2023
I read this a bajillion years ago (okay, I read it in college) and hated it.
However, my work bestie said that it was one of their favoritist books of their teen years, and so I had to read it again and see what happened.
Turns out, Aged Me got the undertones and enjoyed it a whole lot more than the first time, despite, once again, never having read the first book (probably should read the first book to get more backstory, but I don't know that it's necessary).
There's a roving cast of characters, hopping all over the place in POVs in a way that's not really done anymore (this book was released in 2006) but all the vogue before the 2010s hit. It's a fantasy world with only the hints of magic at the edges, and a girl training to be a swordswoman for reasons unknown by her Mad Uncle the Duke (and at the end of the book, I'm still not quite sure what his rationale was). There are gay master swordsmen, bisexual women coming into their feelings, fabulous actresses, competent underlings, grasping nobles and a fifteen year old protagonist who feels very fifteen.
However, my work bestie said that it was one of their favoritist books of their teen years, and so I had to read it again and see what happened.
Turns out, Aged Me got the undertones and enjoyed it a whole lot more than the first time, despite, once again, never having read the first book (probably should read the first book to get more backstory, but I don't know that it's necessary).
There's a roving cast of characters, hopping all over the place in POVs in a way that's not really done anymore (this book was released in 2006) but all the vogue before the 2010s hit. It's a fantasy world with only the hints of magic at the edges, and a girl training to be a swordswoman for reasons unknown by her Mad Uncle the Duke (and at the end of the book, I'm still not quite sure what his rationale was). There are gay master swordsmen, bisexual women coming into their feelings, fabulous actresses, competent underlings, grasping nobles and a fifteen year old protagonist who feels very fifteen.
October 6, 2021
It is full of great and noble truths of the heart. And swordfights.
August 23, 2022
Una segunda parte decepcionante. No es que la primera fuera una obra de arte, pero al menos me entretuvo, esta segunda fue... inesperada.
Read
February 1, 2008Like 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 awareness permeates the book's wry humor, especially in the scenes revolving around the fictional novel, "The Swordsman Whose Name Was Not Death," which is both a vehicle for its society's oppressive mores and the catalyst for subversion on the part of several characters who encounter and reinterpret it. The role of popular fiction in the imaginations and self-conceptions of these characters amounts to an incredibly smart commentary on the limitations and subversive potential of genre fiction, as well as the power of alternative readings of even the most reactionary-seeming stories. It's also a hilarious, affectionate parody of the novel's own genre. Who says that critiques of deep-seated power structures can't also be fun?
Talk about the pleasure of the text. To roughly quote a character (as the book is not in front of me): "It's full of noble truths of the heart. And swordfights!"
Talk about the pleasure of the text. To roughly quote a character (as the book is not in front of me): "It's full of noble truths of the heart. And swordfights!"
September 12, 2013
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 Award winners, I decided to dip a toe into the sister-list for Locus Fantasy winners. I ordered a trio of books from authors I’d never read before Lavinia, Paladin of Souls and The Privilege of the Sword – and this came second out of the three.
At heart, it’s a traditional coming of age tale for our teenage heroine, Katherine, a sweet and romantic girl who dreams of getting dolled-up in pretty gown and snaring a handsome gentleman at a fancy ball. She’s forced to put her own desires aside in the name of familial duty when her rich, mad uncle, the Duke, comes a-calling. His (fairly arbitrary) offer is this: she comes with him to the city, dresses only in men’s clothes and learns to be a swordsman and in return he will save her family’s finances.
Based on this premise, I was expecting some pretty cheesy, clichéd shenanigans and a bit of sledgehammer-subtle feminism – I was pleasantly surprised!
It's a lot more grounded and convincing than cheeseball. The mad Duke keeps things… unpredictable and sometimes pretty funny. Katherine is a very likeable lass, and as she’s slowly won over by the honour and excitement of swordplay it’s hard not to feel a little of her elation. The blind sword master was pretty cool – as was his unconventional relationship with the Duke. The overall tone and spin on the regency style was lively, refreshing and fun.
This is the second in a trilogy, but I read it as a stand-alone and it holds up perfectly well. I understand the first book is set nearly twenty years earlier, so while it fleshes out the world and the duke’s early life, it’s not essential reading.
My main complaint with this book was the ending – I don’t want to give too much away but it’s abrupt, carries no emotional punch and wraps things up far too conveniently for the next book feel 'true'.
The Privilege of the Sword scores a very comfortable three star rating from me – I read it, I enjoyed every minute of it and look back on our time together with fondness, but it didn’t rock my world and I didn’t feel compelled to check out the prequel or sequel.
The Privilege of the Sword won the 2007 Locus Fantasy Award. The Locus Sci-Fi award that year went to Rainbow's End (which I didn't enjoy) and the Locus Y-A Award went to Wintesmith, which is my favourite of the three but not top-drawer Pratchett. Conclusion? 2007 wasn't the finest vintage for Locus award winners.
Having said that, The Lies of Locke Lamora was nominated that year and finished 22nd in the rankings! I wonder how that would fare if the award were given retrospectively? Might be a fun little project one day... or perhaps I have enough lists already?
June 11, 2017
This is the second of the Riverside books that I've read, and I think I've figured out what is peculiar about them - they feel like fan fiction without a source text. Even Swordspoint, the first book, which sets up the world of Riverside and the couple, Alec and Richard, who are the clear emotional heart of that book (and in some ways of this as well, despite being in the background), seems like it is assuming our affection and investment as readers, sharing an inside joke. It works, because it's as easy to care about Richard and Alec as it is to care about some of the best fandom pairings out there, and because the short-handing gives us as readers the pleasant feeling of being a privileged audience, being in on something with them. But it's an interesting experience as a reader. I want to think about the generic traits that make this and some other fantasy feel like fic, where that originates (is it because fandom writers all learn from Kushner and others? are there shared sources to this?).
Anyway, Privilege of the Sword is a lot of fun, but it doesn't work as well as Swordspoint; there's something about it that feels tonally a little off. It might be that I find it hard to get invested in Katherine as a heroine when she is not in on the joke with us (similar problem sometimes with Kel in Tamora Pierce's Protector of the Small, when she interacts with Alanna and Daine - but that rings a little differently because the world of Tortall is more developed, and as readers we have had more time to become invested in it), or because I'm made somewhat uncomfortable by the way volition becomes unimportant in the fantasy-fulfillment narrative of her becoming a swordsman (it's what Alec wants for her, not what she wants for herself, she at first finds the requirement to change her gender presentation unpleasant and scary, and then she - accepts it? It becomes a source of pride and joy for her, and this makes some sense emotionally, but I couldn't quite get away from seeing it as her embodying Alec's dream for her, his own fantasy of a woman who can defend herself and cannot be coerced, not her own. Alec and Katherine's relationship is problematized, but by the end of the novel those problems sort of fade into the background, it's interesting).
Maybe my overall feeling upon finishing the book, that it was fun but didn't quite stick, came out the construction; the side plotlines don't really fit together for me, and, like some other reviewers, I would have preferred it to be all 1st or all 3rd pov. I also wanted it to go darker - I wasn't satisfied with the denouement of the libertine aristrocrat revenge plotline, it wasn't enough for me (again like the side plotlines in Protector of the Small! Hmm).
Alec and Richard remain a joy; Kushner is every effective at giving us just enough of their relationship that we still very much want more. Though I would sort of just have preferred more books straight-up about them.
Anyway, Privilege of the Sword is a lot of fun, but it doesn't work as well as Swordspoint; there's something about it that feels tonally a little off. It might be that I find it hard to get invested in Katherine as a heroine when she is not in on the joke with us (similar problem sometimes with Kel in Tamora Pierce's Protector of the Small, when she interacts with Alanna and Daine - but that rings a little differently because the world of Tortall is more developed, and as readers we have had more time to become invested in it), or because I'm made somewhat uncomfortable by the way volition becomes unimportant in the fantasy-fulfillment narrative of her becoming a swordsman (it's what Alec wants for her, not what she wants for herself, she at first finds the requirement to change her gender presentation unpleasant and scary, and then she - accepts it? It becomes a source of pride and joy for her, and this makes some sense emotionally, but I couldn't quite get away from seeing it as her embodying Alec's dream for her, his own fantasy of a woman who can defend herself and cannot be coerced, not her own. Alec and Katherine's relationship is problematized, but by the end of the novel those problems sort of fade into the background, it's interesting).
Maybe my overall feeling upon finishing the book, that it was fun but didn't quite stick, came out the construction; the side plotlines don't really fit together for me, and, like some other reviewers, I would have preferred it to be all 1st or all 3rd pov. I also wanted it to go darker - I wasn't satisfied with the denouement of the libertine aristrocrat revenge plotline, it wasn't enough for me (again like the side plotlines in Protector of the Small! Hmm).
Alec and Richard remain a joy; Kushner is every effective at giving us just enough of their relationship that we still very much want more. Though I would sort of just have preferred more books straight-up about them.
July 10, 2016
I was into this book as much as Artemisia and Katherine were into The Swordsman Whose Name Was Not Death.
The ending was a bit abrupt, but not out of character. I would've wanted a more intricate ending and a few more chapters. But I'm completely willing to forgive this considering how fast my heart was beating during other parts of the story, and how lost in the story and world I was.
The ending was a bit abrupt, but not out of character. I would've wanted a more intricate ending and a few more chapters. But I'm completely willing to forgive this considering how fast my heart was beating during other parts of the story, and how lost in the story and world I was.
December 3, 2019
I feel bad for this book because I chose to read it at a time where I wanted something else completely tonally different, so I'm not actually sure what to rate it. Full review and rating later.
(six months later)
I DECLARE REVIEW AMNESTY. Giving it a rating though!
[3.5 stars, rounded up]
(six months later)
I DECLARE REVIEW AMNESTY. Giving it a rating though!
[3.5 stars, rounded up]
December 26, 2018
Rating
Review
*** This review originally appeared on Out of this World Reviews. ***
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.
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. Still, there are enough moments where it shines that I’m giving it three rockets.
Review
*** This review originally appeared on Out of this World Reviews. ***
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.
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. Still, there are enough moments where it shines that I’m giving it three rockets.
April 27, 2008
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 in any case have become familiar, are suddenly strange, foreign and altered. This book falls slightly afoul of this, but then there is a wonderfully disturbing scene in the dark in a country cottage that made the magic of Swordspoint come back... and besides, this book weaves its own magic quite capably, and has a different tone and purpose. So I ended up enjoying it very much, even if it wasn't Swordspoint rehashed.
May 5, 2024
nemmeno questo è un fantasy
anche questo potrebbe essere un Harmony
credo invece che sia un precursore degli YA
TRAMA E SPOILER:
St. Vier si è ritirato e gli viene dedicato giusto un piccolo cameo
Alec, il suo compagno, da giovane tormentato è diventato un Duca tormentato che (con grande acume politico) spaccherà la testa del suo nemico con un soprammobile e scapperà, non prima però di aver fatto della nipote adolescente la nuova spadaccina e nuova Duchessa
anche questo potrebbe essere un Harmony
credo invece che sia un precursore degli YA
TRAMA E SPOILER:
St. Vier si è ritirato e gli viene dedicato giusto un piccolo cameo
Alec, il suo compagno, da giovane tormentato è diventato un Duca tormentato che (con grande acume politico) spaccherà la testa del suo nemico con un soprammobile e scapperà, non prima però di aver fatto della nipote adolescente la nuova spadaccina e nuova Duchessa
November 25, 2019
It's a soup of swashbuckling and gender politics and sexuality and coming-of-age-complicated-feelings and Jane Austin jostle-for-a-husband and some truly damaged individuals and a prequel whose presence looms over everything and a willingness to strip the Regency romance of its lace and manners and get down to the raw realpolitik of money and perceived honor and power disparity. Each one of these things is extremely interesting, and even more interesting when the story pairs any one item against any one other item to see the outcome.
All of this from the viewpoint of the 'next generation', of Katherine Talbot made an 'outsider' to the society sphere, and Artimisia Fitz-Levi as society girl and its eventual prisoner and economic token. Both of them move in radically different vectors but eventually enter into a delicate and chaste romance using the language of popular swashbuckler fiction. All of these characters are compelling.
There is a lot going on here, and the sheer busyness is a joy, but my favorite is the parsimoniously-mentioned aftereffects of Swordspoint (a book I have not read) and how it shadows the characters of that story and this one. I wonder that if going back to that book after this one would ruin both.
All of this from the viewpoint of the 'next generation', of Katherine Talbot made an 'outsider' to the society sphere, and Artimisia Fitz-Levi as society girl and its eventual prisoner and economic token. Both of them move in radically different vectors but eventually enter into a delicate and chaste romance using the language of popular swashbuckler fiction. All of these characters are compelling.
There is a lot going on here, and the sheer busyness is a joy, but my favorite is the parsimoniously-mentioned aftereffects of Swordspoint (a book I have not read) and how it shadows the characters of that story and this one. I wonder that if going back to that book after this one would ruin both.
August 7, 2012
This is one of the oddest sequels I've ever read - so much time has passed, and all the characters have changed so much, but their development in the intervening decades makes perfect sense - it's like we've tossed a ball high in the air, ran a few feet with eyes closed, and caught the ball again.
These characters are some of the most richly illustrated I've ever read - they sparkle with humanity and ignorance and dark secrets. one can't help but loving all of them, for their vanity and pain and joy. specifically, the way the book articulates gender - the awful yawning power differential between men and women (especially around the institution of marriage), as well as the liberatory possibilities of breaking out.
These characters are some of the most richly illustrated I've ever read - they sparkle with humanity and ignorance and dark secrets. one can't help but loving all of them, for their vanity and pain and joy. specifically, the way the book articulates gender - the awful yawning power differential between men and women (especially around the institution of marriage), as well as the liberatory possibilities of breaking out.
October 10, 2018
3.5 stars.
This book had a lot of things I loved about it. Everyone of significance was bisexual, it had some great conflicts, and the f/f romance was the best I've ever read, even if the 2 don't actually hook up during the story.
However, I felt a complete lack of world building, and the plot didn't really start until halfway through. The ending was also very abrupt.
This book had a lot of things I loved about it. Everyone of significance was bisexual, it had some great conflicts, and the f/f romance was the best I've ever read, even if the 2 don't actually hook up during the story.
However, I felt a complete lack of world building, and the plot didn't really start until halfway through. The ending was also very abrupt.
October 5, 2017
y'all... i love this book
February 4, 2019
I remember reading Swordspoint quite a few years ago and the feeling of awe mixed with the sense of lacking, of some insufficiency, of some potential not fully used. The same kind of feeling accompanied me when I finished The Privilege of the Sword. On the one hand there was so much I loved, on the other – it was so close to being great and I’m really not sure it was.
Let’s start with the positive things and there are plenty. First of all I loved the whole idea of the book. The book is set in a renaissance-like world and it starts with Katherine, our main character, being more or less commanded to move from her family home in the countryside to the city, to live together with her uncle, charmingly nicknamed the Mad Duke. Katherine is surely one of the highlights of the novel. There is enough of heroines that want to climb trees and be like boys who are forced to be ‘proper’ girls in beautiful dressed and who learn how to enjoy their femininity, which looks like the only way they can live in the world, in the end. Katherine is NOT “not like the other girls” – she wants balls, and be a part of the elite of young girls, have beautiful dresses and have fun. She is depressed when her uncle takes her clothes away and forces her to learn how to fight with a sword. She slowly learns how to not only tolerate it, but also enjoy and her notion of gender and its role becomes much more fluid. Really, I don’t remember another teenage heroine who will be so likeable and so rarely irritating in a long run!
I adored sometimes fierce, sometimes subtle criticism of said gender roles, the natural way of treating sexuality (ah, Katherine’s “awakening!”). The whole gallery of characters was fascinating and lovely, some of them I’d really love to learn more about. The plot was gripping and it surprised me into tears twice (not because it was sad but because emotions) and I laughed aloud once or twice. Let me tell you, there were also some hot moments and ah! Lots of things to like.
And there was also Alec Campion who should be so difficult to like, but he breaks my heart just by existing (and no, he is not one of these angsty, brooding heroes) and I can’t help but love him, even when I’m aware he is an asshole. But he is so honestly, the author does not excuse him. He can be an asshole and he can also do things for which people would go into fire for him. And the love of his life… Oh my. The romance is not even a secondary plot but further and still I loved it to pieces. I’m totally not immune to all these “I can be with everyone but for your one word I can set kingdoms on fire, just say it,” although it doesn’t match this relationship quite that good. Ah, Alec! (And well, his name is not without a meaning for me, let be honest, every Alexander or Alec has bonus points already in the beginning.)
So what went wrong? When I think about it as a whole, I would say that the pacing is the biggest trouble. There are moments that drag and the moments that feel rushed (the whole ending! It was almost anti-climactic) while you want to read more about it. We have lots of characters introduced and at first I felt a bit lost in the jungle of them, then I got used to the flood of names. But many of them are there for unclear reason. We wait for something meaningful about them and in the end they are treated almost like a tool in one scene (Flavia!), often it feels there are no real climaxes in these subplots, that the lead to nowhere and it feels almost like cheating. Logically, I know it’s not really true, but emotionally I didn’t feel fully satisfied. And it also says a lot about how emotionally engrossed I became.
I will recommend this book as for its flaws it’s still a very good novel in my opinion, although it could be great and it missed the chance, a bit. Still – Katherine! Alec! Worth reading for those two (and so many more…)
Let’s start with the positive things and there are plenty. First of all I loved the whole idea of the book. The book is set in a renaissance-like world and it starts with Katherine, our main character, being more or less commanded to move from her family home in the countryside to the city, to live together with her uncle, charmingly nicknamed the Mad Duke. Katherine is surely one of the highlights of the novel. There is enough of heroines that want to climb trees and be like boys who are forced to be ‘proper’ girls in beautiful dressed and who learn how to enjoy their femininity, which looks like the only way they can live in the world, in the end. Katherine is NOT “not like the other girls” – she wants balls, and be a part of the elite of young girls, have beautiful dresses and have fun. She is depressed when her uncle takes her clothes away and forces her to learn how to fight with a sword. She slowly learns how to not only tolerate it, but also enjoy and her notion of gender and its role becomes much more fluid. Really, I don’t remember another teenage heroine who will be so likeable and so rarely irritating in a long run!
I adored sometimes fierce, sometimes subtle criticism of said gender roles, the natural way of treating sexuality (ah, Katherine’s “awakening!”). The whole gallery of characters was fascinating and lovely, some of them I’d really love to learn more about. The plot was gripping and it surprised me into tears twice (not because it was sad but because emotions) and I laughed aloud once or twice. Let me tell you, there were also some hot moments and ah! Lots of things to like.
And there was also Alec Campion who should be so difficult to like, but he breaks my heart just by existing (and no, he is not one of these angsty, brooding heroes) and I can’t help but love him, even when I’m aware he is an asshole. But he is so honestly, the author does not excuse him. He can be an asshole and he can also do things for which people would go into fire for him. And the love of his life… Oh my. The romance is not even a secondary plot but further and still I loved it to pieces. I’m totally not immune to all these “I can be with everyone but for your one word I can set kingdoms on fire, just say it,” although it doesn’t match this relationship quite that good. Ah, Alec! (And well, his name is not without a meaning for me, let be honest, every Alexander or Alec has bonus points already in the beginning.)
So what went wrong? When I think about it as a whole, I would say that the pacing is the biggest trouble. There are moments that drag and the moments that feel rushed (the whole ending! It was almost anti-climactic) while you want to read more about it. We have lots of characters introduced and at first I felt a bit lost in the jungle of them, then I got used to the flood of names. But many of them are there for unclear reason. We wait for something meaningful about them and in the end they are treated almost like a tool in one scene (Flavia!), often it feels there are no real climaxes in these subplots, that the lead to nowhere and it feels almost like cheating. Logically, I know it’s not really true, but emotionally I didn’t feel fully satisfied. And it also says a lot about how emotionally engrossed I became.
I will recommend this book as for its flaws it’s still a very good novel in my opinion, although it could be great and it missed the chance, a bit. Still – Katherine! Alec! Worth reading for those two (and so many more…)
July 27, 2011
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
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
June 27, 2021
Another very good book set in the same universe and very interesting to return to the world of Swordspoint 20 years later and se what have happened to the characters. The mad Duke is really living up for his name but beloved secondary characters around him do steal your heart.
The two widely difirent wievpoint on most of the book make the book very interesting as katherines life should been and how it became.
The two widely difirent wievpoint on most of the book make the book very interesting as katherines life should been and how it became.
August 6, 2016
Alec Campion, the “Mad Duke” Tremontain, is jaded and disgusted with the behavior of his fellow nobility. Their facade of elegance and respectability is a sham, while they abuse their wealth, power, and privileges—including the privilege to sic trained swordsmen on anyone they disagree with. Alec decides to twist that latter privilege on its head by inviting his niece Kate from the countryside and training her to become his swordswoman/bodyguard.
This is a sequel to the original Riverside novel, Swordspoint, where Alec first appeared. I like him better in this new, older incarnation. He is still, as they call it, mad, but the method to his madness is much more apparent—he puts it: “I can’t make the rules, so I like breaking them.” He’s gone from being a poor student in disgrace with his family to a wealthy duke bringing disgrace on his family, using his resources guided by his insanity to poke fun (and sometimes poke holes in) the rest of the nobility. This means, weirdly enough, that this hostile, depressing, and depressed man is making things better for everyone who isn’t even more of a bastard than he is.
Then there’s Katherine, who is a very sympathetic character. Compassionate and relatively astute, she’s still a very ordinary, down-to-earth person who is disturbed and baffled in turns by Alec and by the rest of the city. Although in the opening I feared she might suffer from Generic YA Heroine Syndrome—she finds sewing tedious, and the plot of the book does involve her transgressing gender roles in a way that in lesser hands could devolve into “Wow, I’m so glad I’m not like those sheep-like other girls and am instead doing such wonderful masculine things—yay, feminism”—I should have expected better from Kushner. This book has a much more nuanced perspective, although I would argue it’s still ultimately feminist. LGBT-positive, class-conscious feminism that recognizes there are lots of ways to be an awesome female character (in addition to Kate the swordswoman, we have a lady mathematician, a playwright, two actresses—one of whom plays men’s roles or “trouser” roles—and Artemisia, who is in some ways a typical lady of this society but who escapes her gilded cage through sheer defiance, and some help from Kate). And Kate doesn’t wholeheartedly embrace her “masculine” role, at least at first. Wearing men’s clothes is genuinely uncomfortable for her.
There is also a great line from Kate after she sees her first duel. Her teacher worries the blood concerned her, but she points out most women see more blood every month.
Speaking of great lines, there are moments of breathtaking visuals, to the point that I got flat-out envious of Kushner’s ability to do that with words. She uses an interesting technique of interspersing Kate’s 1st-person POV with other viewpoints in 3rd person, for reasons I can’t quite determine. It does work, though, and makes Kate that much more approachable. The wider cast of characters—including many more women—and somewhat more optimistic outlook make this book an easier read than the original Swordspoint. That doesn’t mean it got dumbed down—if Swordspoint made the same sort of nuanced feminist analysis as Privilege, I missed it because I was trying too hard to figure out what was going on with people’s indirect dialogue, sarcasm, and general nastiness.
For all that, I missed the central relationship of Swordspoint, at least at the start. Although it does reappear, in a way that—limiting spoilers—makes Kate’s training and transformation into a very passable swordfighter much less tedious and much more believeable than I feared. Training montages generally bore me, but this one was less about learning skills (although Kate did that) and more about her emotional relationship with her mentor.
Also, Alec Campion made me tear up with a line about fish. Along with probably anyone who read Swordspoint.
I was wondering at times if Kate would, like her uncle, enter a same-sex relationship, and there was one point which seemed very promising. In the end, I understand and like what Kushner did instead. Her heterosexual relationships are nuanced and subversive (especially the romance of Lucius Perry, a highborn man who is a prostitute in a male brothel some nights to support his relationship with a woman in a crumbling marriage). And this is not to erase the bisexual reading, which seems likely for many if not most characters.
I said this was an easy read—I that mean emotionally more than intellectually It was extremely cathartic, so cathartic that I saved passages I knew would contain Kate kicking patriarchal behind to cleanse the nasty aftertaste of another novel I was reading at the time. Non-spoilery thoughts on the ending: very open-ended in several areas to allow for the next book, but also very satisfying for me. Although, as another reviewer pointed out, the story is Kate’s, but the climax is really Alec’s. This is nagging from a storytelling standpoint, although it makes a sort of sense given the events and the personalities involved (I’m sure Alec would feel his solution is the only one available). I’ll give Kate and her friends this happy ending—they certainly deserve it.
This is a sequel to the original Riverside novel, Swordspoint, where Alec first appeared. I like him better in this new, older incarnation. He is still, as they call it, mad, but the method to his madness is much more apparent—he puts it: “I can’t make the rules, so I like breaking them.” He’s gone from being a poor student in disgrace with his family to a wealthy duke bringing disgrace on his family, using his resources guided by his insanity to poke fun (and sometimes poke holes in) the rest of the nobility. This means, weirdly enough, that this hostile, depressing, and depressed man is making things better for everyone who isn’t even more of a bastard than he is.
Then there’s Katherine, who is a very sympathetic character. Compassionate and relatively astute, she’s still a very ordinary, down-to-earth person who is disturbed and baffled in turns by Alec and by the rest of the city. Although in the opening I feared she might suffer from Generic YA Heroine Syndrome—she finds sewing tedious, and the plot of the book does involve her transgressing gender roles in a way that in lesser hands could devolve into “Wow, I’m so glad I’m not like those sheep-like other girls and am instead doing such wonderful masculine things—yay, feminism”—I should have expected better from Kushner. This book has a much more nuanced perspective, although I would argue it’s still ultimately feminist. LGBT-positive, class-conscious feminism that recognizes there are lots of ways to be an awesome female character (in addition to Kate the swordswoman, we have a lady mathematician, a playwright, two actresses—one of whom plays men’s roles or “trouser” roles—and Artemisia, who is in some ways a typical lady of this society but who escapes her gilded cage through sheer defiance, and some help from Kate). And Kate doesn’t wholeheartedly embrace her “masculine” role, at least at first. Wearing men’s clothes is genuinely uncomfortable for her.
There is also a great line from Kate after she sees her first duel. Her teacher worries the blood concerned her, but she points out most women see more blood every month.
Speaking of great lines, there are moments of breathtaking visuals, to the point that I got flat-out envious of Kushner’s ability to do that with words. She uses an interesting technique of interspersing Kate’s 1st-person POV with other viewpoints in 3rd person, for reasons I can’t quite determine. It does work, though, and makes Kate that much more approachable. The wider cast of characters—including many more women—and somewhat more optimistic outlook make this book an easier read than the original Swordspoint. That doesn’t mean it got dumbed down—if Swordspoint made the same sort of nuanced feminist analysis as Privilege, I missed it because I was trying too hard to figure out what was going on with people’s indirect dialogue, sarcasm, and general nastiness.
For all that, I missed the central relationship of Swordspoint, at least at the start. Although it does reappear, in a way that—limiting spoilers—makes Kate’s training and transformation into a very passable swordfighter much less tedious and much more believeable than I feared. Training montages generally bore me, but this one was less about learning skills (although Kate did that) and more about her emotional relationship with her mentor.
Also, Alec Campion made me tear up with a line about fish. Along with probably anyone who read Swordspoint.
I was wondering at times if Kate would, like her uncle, enter a same-sex relationship, and there was one point which seemed very promising. In the end, I understand and like what Kushner did instead. Her heterosexual relationships are nuanced and subversive (especially the romance of Lucius Perry, a highborn man who is a prostitute in a male brothel some nights to support his relationship with a woman in a crumbling marriage). And this is not to erase the bisexual reading, which seems likely for many if not most characters.
I said this was an easy read—I that mean emotionally more than intellectually It was extremely cathartic, so cathartic that I saved passages I knew would contain Kate kicking patriarchal behind to cleanse the nasty aftertaste of another novel I was reading at the time. Non-spoilery thoughts on the ending: very open-ended in several areas to allow for the next book, but also very satisfying for me. Although, as another reviewer pointed out, the story is Kate’s, but the climax is really Alec’s. This is nagging from a storytelling standpoint, although it makes a sort of sense given the events and the personalities involved (I’m sure Alec would feel his solution is the only one available). I’ll give Kate and her friends this happy ending—they certainly deserve it.
March 28, 2020
Glorious
I can’t think why I have taken so long to find Ellen Kushner - someone who can actually write; who creates characters with actual emotional intelligence and who understands how to fight. It’s perfect. If you haven’t read Swordspoint, you have to read it before this. But then don’t start late at night or you’ll get no sleep. There. You have been warned.
I can’t think why I have taken so long to find Ellen Kushner - someone who can actually write; who creates characters with actual emotional intelligence and who understands how to fight. It’s perfect. If you haven’t read Swordspoint, you have to read it before this. But then don’t start late at night or you’ll get no sleep. There. You have been warned.
September 29, 2024
when will a rich gay uncle kidnap ME and teach ME important queer lessons such as studying the blade?😩⚔️
January 14, 2018
This is a significant improvement on the previous book.
In contrast to the previous book, this is female-centric. It revolves around Katherine, whose uncle asks her to come to the city. In return, her uncle, the Mad Duke Tremontaine (Alec from the previous book) will drop a long-running lawsuit against her family. A parallel storyline involves Artemisia, who has just started her Season (of being introduced to noble society). Artemisia expects to get married, and
I loved the ending. That second last chapter is a powerful ending scene. (The final chapter is a good epilogue.) The pacing was great, as well as the character development. We see Katherine's resistance to being trained as a swordsman, but when . I also loved the relationship between
There's a lot of sex and sexuality in this book - . I did like the mentions of history - both during Alec and Richard's time, and even further back in history. It grounds this book.
I did enjoy how the book managed to maintain its light, fantasy of manners feel too. 3.5 stars.
In contrast to the previous book, this is female-centric. It revolves around Katherine, whose uncle asks her to come to the city. In return, her uncle, the Mad Duke Tremontaine (Alec from the previous book) will drop a long-running lawsuit against her family. A parallel storyline involves Artemisia, who has just started her Season (of being introduced to noble society). Artemisia expects to get married, and
I loved the ending. That second last chapter is a powerful ending scene. (The final chapter is a good epilogue.) The pacing was great, as well as the character development. We see Katherine's resistance to being trained as a swordsman, but when . I also loved the relationship between
There's a lot of sex and sexuality in this book - . I did like the mentions of history - both during Alec and Richard's time, and even further back in history. It grounds this book.
I did enjoy how the book managed to maintain its light, fantasy of manners feel too. 3.5 stars.
August 20, 2007
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 felt there were far too many characters, some introduced fairly late into the story (The Black Rose, for example). Kushner was clearly aiming to create a web of subplots which would demonstrate a pattern when looked at from the end of the story, but it was too much, and too muddled.
I also didn't exactly believe one of the central premises -- that Katherine would be so devoted to Artemesia after meeting her just once at a party for only a couple of moments.
The writing was capable and evocative. The sexiness was rather sexy. The setting was believable and elegantly developed. Kushner's point of view shifted a tad irresponsibly, but I was definitely engaged by the story. I looked forward to picking the book up again when I had to put it down, and often thought about the story in the meantime. I was anxious to find out exactly what the Mad Duke was up to and felt very satisfied at the end. Recommended, but I'd say Holly Black's cover blurb is a bit overstated.
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 felt there were far too many characters, some introduced fairly late into the story (The Black Rose, for example). Kushner was clearly aiming to create a web of subplots which would demonstrate a pattern when looked at from the end of the story, but it was too much, and too muddled.
I also didn't exactly believe one of the central premises -- that Katherine would be so devoted to Artemesia after meeting her just once at a party for only a couple of moments.
The writing was capable and evocative. The sexiness was rather sexy. The setting was believable and elegantly developed. Kushner's point of view shifted a tad irresponsibly, but I was definitely engaged by the story. I looked forward to picking the book up again when I had to put it down, and often thought about the story in the meantime. I was anxious to find out exactly what the Mad Duke was up to and felt very satisfied at the end. Recommended, but I'd say Holly Black's cover blurb is a bit overstated.
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