Sarah's Reviews > The Privilege of the Sword

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