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57 of 62 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A privilege and a pleasure to read, July 26, 2006
This is the book I have been waiting for since I first read Swordspoint, more than ten years ago.
It's not the first sequel. When The Fall of the Kings came out, a few years back, I devoured that too. And I was delighted to find old familiar names, and see how the City had changed, and I learned fascinating things about its history, and gnawed my knuckles in sheer envy over the complicated silver chocolate services... but I wasn't quite satisfied, because it had skipped a generation ahead, and it didn't really tell me what I most wanted to know, which was "what became of Richard and Alec?"
This one does.
This is a jewel of a book. At first I thought of it as a tray of pastries, each more cunning and delicious than the last -- creamy eclairs, jam tarts, marzipan fruits with their hint of cyanide bitterness under the sweet -- with all of the gowns and matchmaking and Riverside debauchery and multi-era historical details, with all of the froth of the best Georgette Heyer novels, concentrated and multiplied -- and then, as I read further on, it was as if I found another platter of savory morsels hiding behind it, because Ellen Kushner doesn't stop at the glorious surface froth. She's spent a great deal of time considering how the sordid, dreary, and messy complications we're used to in modern life would play out in the setting and the culture she's developed. It gives everything depth, and richness, and a startling reality.
If you've ever wondered what became of any of the characters from Swordspoint, you'll find it out in this book. Well, I didn't notice Nimble Willie the pickpocket, I suppose, but otherwise, they're all there. And you learn what drove Alec to live as he did, and... oh, there is SO MUCH in this book.
Also, if you are like me, you will be utterly slain by the recurrence of this line: "'Hello,' he said. 'I've brought us some fish.'"
Read it. Buy it. Buy it for all your friends, but make them read Swordspoint first.
Absolutely worth the wait.
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19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Ellen Kushner does it again!, August 19, 2006
Alec Campion, the Mad Duke, is some twenty years older than in Swordspoint, but he isn't any less a trial to his family, friends, and enemies. Dividing his time between Tremontaine House and his Riverside house, the Duke Tremontaine hosts parties ranging from the risqué to the debauched, and lives a life of dissipation.
He also quietly makes political trouble for those intent schemes that would line their own pockets at the expense of the less powerful and the less well-connected. Aside from his own affinity for the dispossessed, it doesn't hurt at all that the principal plotter against the general good is his old enemy, Anthony Deverin, Lord Ferris. Into this political and social minefield, Tremontaine brings his niece, Katherine. With the stick of a revived lawsuit challenging his sister's marriage settlement and the carrot of permanently settling the lawsuit, he forces his sister Janine to send her daughter to him--with an absolute ban on family contact for six months.
Katherine arrives with happy dreams of fine dresses and a Season in town. She quickly learns that she will have only boy's clothes, and fencing lessons. Her uncle is having her trained to be his bodyguard.
As Katherine slowly learns her way around the duke's household, the city, and a sword, she also acquires a few friends, most notably Marcus, the duke's young assistant, and Lady Artemisia Fitz-Levi, a sweet but somewhat silly young lady of her own age, who nevertheless receives and accepts a proposal of marriage from the most eligible bachelor available--the widowed Lord Ferris.
Katherine's not happy to discover she'll be going to no respectable balls, wearing no dresses, and being received by practically nobody, but she does learn to enjoy swordplay and, with Marcus, trailing and investigating one of the Duke's visitors, whom she recognizes from her one very brief attempt to visit Artemisia. Unfortunately, the next place she meets Artemisia is at the Rogues' Ball. Katherine has come with the Duke; Artemisia with her fiancé, Lord Ferris. Lord Ferris, concerned that the flighty Artemisia might call off the betrothal that he's counting on for reasons of his own, has taken advantage of this evening away from Artemisia's family, friends, and chaperones to make sure she has no choice. Artemisia begs for Katherine's help, and Katherine's personal desire to avenge and protect her friend gets tangled up with the Duke's personal and political enmity for Ferris. Everyone's keeping secrets from everyone, and things start to spiral out of control.
Like Swordspoint, this is a really fine fantasy novel with not a hint of magic to be found in it anywhere.
Recommended.
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Ripping good fun, September 8, 2006
If you have a swash in need of buckling, check out Ellen Kushner's The Privilege of the Sword. Yes, it is everything you think it is: a romance (in the traditional sense of the word, not the genre sense--well, maybe that, too), a fantasy, a satire. And it is many things that you don't expect: a pointed commentary on gender, sex, family and love, and a ripping good adventure as well.
It is Kushner's willingness and ability to screw with your expectations that make the novel enjoyable. From the vulgar core beneath Lord Ferris' refined and gentlemanly exterior to the nobility of the loose-living Duke Tremontaine to the inexorable resolve of the flighty Artemisia Fitz-Levi, none of Kushner's characters is all light or all darkness. When I finished the book, I was sorry that it had ended.
There are numerous characters who made previous appearances in Kushner's other Riverside novels, but foreknowledge of their dealings is not necessary to enjoy the book. That said, many of the asides and minor details of the book are much more likely to delight those who have read Swordspoint and The Fall of the Kings than Kushner neophytes like me.
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