Swordspoint [Mass Market Paperback]

Ellen Kushner (Author)

Book Description

Release date: February 4, 2003

The classic forerunner to The Fall of the Kings now with three bonus stories.

Hailed by critics as “a bravura performance” (Locus) and “witty, sharp-eyed, [and] full of interesting people” (Newsday), this classic melodrama of manners, filled with remarkable plot twists and unexpected humor, takes fantasy to an unprecedented level of elegant writing and scintillating wit. Award-winning author Ellen Kushner has created a world of unforgettable characters whose political ambitions, passionate love affairs, and age-old rivalries collide with deadly results.

Swordspoint

On the treacherous streets of Riverside, a man lives and dies by the sword. Even the nobles on the Hill turn to duels to settle their disputes. Within this elite, dangerous world, Richard St. Vier is the undisputed master, as skilled as he is ruthless--until a death by the sword is met with outrage instead of awe, and the city discovers that the line between hero and villain can be altered in the blink of an eye.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In the highly stratified world of Kushner's nameless old city, the aristocrats living in fine mansions on the Hill settle their differences by sending to the thieves' den of Riverside for swordsmen who will fight to the death for a point of someone else's honor. Young Lord Michael Godwin is so taken by these romantic figures that he studies the art himselfuntil challenged by the best of them. Master of the Sword, Richard St. Vier is picky in his contracts and precise in his killing but he nevertheless becomes embroiled in the nobility's political, social and sexual intrigues. When his lover Alec is kidnapped by Lord Horn, St. Vier must take drastic action. Kushner's authorial voice may be somewhat smug and self-conscious but that suits her subject. Her novel is intelligent, humorous and dramatic, with a fine, malicious feeling for the operation of gossip in a closed society.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

“[Kushner] draws you through the story with such lucid, powerful writing that you come to trust her completely--and she doesn’t let you down...Watch this woman--she’s going to be one of the great ones.”
--Orson Scott Card

"There is an element of high romance to Kushner’s work, but it is honed to a bleeding edge by a deep appreciation of what motivates men and women. These are fantasies for adults, with the pang of real love and loss in them, sometimes surprisingly violent, sometimes breathtakingly tender, and sometimes very passionate indeed." --Realms of Fantasy

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Spectra (February 4, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0553585495
• ISBN-13: 978-0553585490
• Product Dimensions: 4.2 x 1 x 6.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (80 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #470,042 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

42 of 42 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Uniquely character-centered setting and plot in a compact novel. August 16, 2005

By Scott Andrews

Format:Mass Market Paperback

_Swordspoint_, Ellen Kushner's "melodrama of manners" from 1987, features vividly drawn characters in a non-standard fantasy setting. Graceful swordplay replaces magic, dense Regency-era social customs replace feudal hierarchy, and political intrigue replaces the usual battle between good and evil. With the refreshing lack of apocalyptically dire stakes, Kushner's complex characters take center stage.

The fantasy setting is a nameless pre-technological city, with districts of elegant estates and gritty slums. Yet Kushner's approach makes this setting unique. She never halts the story or disrupts the atmosphere to explain the workings of the society. Government titles and institutions are noted only when appropriate to the characters' motivations. This isolation from the infrastructure of the society leaves the characters' perceived world -- the areas of the society that they inhabit -- as the dominant face of the setting.

Kushner wrings intense conflict from her constrained setting by cutting to the heart of her characters' motivations. Her portrayal of a Regency-style social scene feels perfect, in both the delicate high society and the gritty low. After a quick first chapter, the novel crawls through slow social scenes with secondary characters whose importance hasn't yet been shown. As such, their lengthy gossip doesn't have any context or meaning at this early stage. Once Richard begins receiving offers for duels, the plot picks up speed. The intrigue gradually ensnares all the previously introduced characters and rushes toward the conclusion. The ending features a clever twist, and all the characters' lives are irrevocably changed.

_Swordspoint_ is a delightfully compact novel, especially by modern fantasy standards. The plot resolution in a single volume is a refreshing change from the recent trend of fantasy duologies, many of which are actually a large manuscript split into two books for publication, and consequently have no resolution at the end of the first book.

Kushner's prose has a few awkward tics that distract from her subtle dialog and lush descriptions. Her dialog tags often carry unnecessary adverbs. She also uses 'Richard' and 'St Vier' interchangeably to refer to the main character, sometimes in the same sentence. However, in dialog she more appropriately picks whichever one of these names represents his relationship to the person speaking -- Alec always calls him Richard, the jailer always calls him St Vier. In addition, the point of view often floats from character to character in the same scene, leaving the reader at a distance, struggling to follow the complex social agenda of each character.

_Swordspoint_ stands as a classic of character-driven fantasy, particularly compared to the bland rehashes of epic fantasy that were also being written in the late 80s. Kushner's novel reads like a forerunner of the recent social intrigue fantasy from authors like Jacqueline Carey, and she deserves credit for this landmark work that pioneered that subgenre.

32 of 33 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars What a curious and entertaining book. September 22, 1999

By A Customer

Format:Mass Market Paperback

It's like Georgette Heyer meets Armistead Maupin meets "The Lion In Winter". I loved it.

Kushner takes every predictable Regency/Gothic/Modern Romance cliche and turns it on it's head. The stalwart hero is a master swordsman, a devoted lover...and a complete sociopath. The highborn love of his life is a green-eyed, sultry-voiced beauty...with severe emotional problems and a lot more testosterone than one generally expects in highborn beauties.

The beauty gets kidnapped and manhandled. The hero gets even and then gets lucky. The beauty takes a powder. The hero gets arrested. The beauty has a brief, but memorable, career in politics. The hero gets off and then bows out graciously. The beauty lures him back with fish and chips and...whatever.

I highly recommend this one, and I can't tell you how pleased I am that there's a sequel in the works.

105 of 122 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Well written, but not my cup of tea March 16, 2004

By Wendy C. Darling

Format:Mass Market Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

I first heard about Swordspoint through Amazon.com. I'm quite a regular at Amazon, not just buying things but just looking up stuff and finding more stuff to read. One of my favorite features is My Recommendations, which given how many things I've rated or reviewed, are actually pretty accurate.

So one day when Amazon realized I had a penchant for reading fantasy books with queer characters (gee, how would it guess?!), out popped a message on a page saying "Hey, you might like to read Swordspoint!" (Or something similar, think it was worded differently.) So I checked out the description, read the reviews and thought, "Huh, that does sound interesting!" and you know, ordered it. (Boy, Amazon makes it too easy!)

Swordspoint turned out not to be exactly what I had expected. Having just come off of reading Lynn Flewelling's delightful, outstanding Nightrunner series, I was I guess expecting something a little racier or filled with heart-pounding action or some magic or something really scary. Instead I found the book to be just what it says on the back cover, a "melodrama of manners."

There's a well-drawn relationship between a professional swordsman and a mysterious noble scholar who's abandoned his privilege for a death wish, and that was fun, but then there was another half to the story with nobles plotting and scheming, politics and politenesses and callings cards -- which to me was not so fun. I loved the bits with dashing Richard St Vier and drunken bitter Alec, but every time I'd really start to get into them, the chapter would end and I'd have to slog through a scene of some noblelady or nobleman's blathering or covering up some secret or plotting to knock off a rival. To me, patient and literate as I am, those bits just were boring and dry.

It reminded me of some lost 18th or 19th century novel, only twist being that the two main heroes are gay lovers and everybody's okay with that. It's true that in the Nightrunner series, there's a similar situation (a regular spies, swords and sorcery book, only with gay lovers), but for me Swordspoint didn't have the overall story I enjoy so I wasn't nearly as satisfied. I will say, however, that if you like a book with a lot of intrigue and intricate plot and old-fashioned literary language, Swordspoint is probably a book you'd enjoy.

If there was one thing that made my disappointment a little less with this book, it came at the end, where in the edition I have, Kushner has included three additional stories set in the Swordspoint world. I actually enjoyed these stories more than the actual novel! I think it was the fact that in the stories, all the frilly "melodrama of manners" stuff was cut out and only the good bits were there. The stories also had a higher proportion of sexual spice to them. And in "The Death of the Duke," Kushner creates a magical tale depicting the final weeks of Alec, as an old man returned to the nameless city, setting of Swordspoint, and dying amid his memories of Richard St Vier -- what a wonderful tribute!