Swordspoint: A Melodrama of Manners

Swordspoint, by Ellen Kushner, is a witty and unabashedly queer caper of a book. It is a quirky, quick thing full of precise violence and political intrigue written in a silvery voice. The book is low fantasy--set in a world that has never quite existed, but one which is thoroughly mundane and historically rooted; no magic or elves here, folks. The story follows Richard St. Vier, a half-crazy and meticulously genius swordsman for hire, his mysterious lover Alec, and the naive nobleman Michael Godwin as the three get swept into the subterfuge and deadly political games of the ruling class. There is honor in the book--it's shot through with honor--but there's no morality. Or what morality exists is aggressively gray. This is a book with no clear villains, just selfish people and ambitious people and callous people. It's a book populated by very real people. This is a book that has some tricks up its sleeve: wonderful turns of phrase, pointed social commentary, and it's a book packed to the brim with plot and plot twists.Swordspoint has a deft hand in its treatment of both class and sexuality. The story moves repeatedly from high to low, up to the nobleman's Hill and back down to Riverside. The realities and limitations of life in both cases are clearly drawn, and as the book goes on Kushner slowly reveals the deeply symbiotic relationship between the two classes. Richard St. Vier is the embodiment of this: a poor man living a poor man's life who plays a vital role in the nobles' politicking. Richard's role manifests again in his relationship with his lover Alec, a clearly high bred man playing pauper who roams around Riverside starting fights Richard must finish for him. Sexuality is dealt with in a simple and wonderfully frank way; it's refreshing to read a book where non-hetero relationships are written about as easily and with as much normalcy as straight ones. Again, there's a classed element to this: the sexual liaisons up on the Hill are just another form of secretive political alliance, whereas everyone in Riverside knows everyone else's business and no one particularly cares much.The writing itself flows like wine. Kushner has a smooth, rarefied voice. She is a master of imagery, knowing exactly which details to include to make a picture crystal clear. All of her writing is seamless, and it all works even when, by rights, it shouldn't. A case in point is Kushner's tendency to head-hop, jumping from one POV character to another with no warning within the same scene. Usually this irks the living shit out of me. Usually I find it jarring and it rips me out of the narrative. For some reason (and I don't know why the particular alchemy of her writing makes this work) it was no problem at all for me in Swordspoint . There's a kind of force to Kushner's writing, and a kind of tricky truth, that keeps the book from being the overwritten confusing mess it could have been in another writer's hands. My hands, for instance, could not have produced something in this style that was remotely coherent or pleasant to read.Swordspoint is extremely good, but it's not perfect. While the book passes the Bechdel test it's still very much a masculine book. The honor at play is masculine honor--even when manipulated by the beautiful and calculating Duchess Tremontaine it's masculine honor at stake. We see hints of feminine agency in Riverside, but the book doesn't dwell on them. This is a masculine book, and the queer elements at play here are masculine queer experiences. We see many men pursuing and loving and getting rebuffed by other men, and presumably that sexual openness extends to lesbian relationships, too, but we see exactly none of that in this book.The prodigious plot of the book could have been tighter. Specifically, the thread of Michael Godwin feels very much unresolved by the end of the novel. His prominence in the story and the ambiguous place he is left when we last encounter him makes him feel like a more important character than he turns out to be. It feels, a bit, like Kushner loved the character and wanted him in the book, but really his story only crosses the main narrative arc in one or two places. He's not actually vital to the narrative. It may be that he plays a bigger part in the subsequent books in the series, I don't know, but in this book his subplot is strangely disconnected and unresolved.

There are several well-drawn characters in this novel but that doesn't mean that there are any that I would call wholly admirable.Richard, the swordsman who is the center of the story, kills people for hire. There is an elaborate code by which he may approach his victim and challenge him to fight to the death. This system has its oddities and I will go into them before I continue about Richard.Apparently the victim cannot, in honor, demur. Major nobles keep bodyguards but they don't defend their charge by descending on a would-be challenger in a group or setting the dogs on him. One of them simply accepts the challenge in his master's stead and someone is killed. At that point, honor is satisfied, at least temporarily, so the assassination does not take place. Also, young noblemen, who don't usually have a bodyguard around, are often the targets of such challenges and usually killed. However, despite their massive amount of leisure time, young nobles don't seem to take up the study of the sword, or not seriously. This game of challenge and kill is odd in that no one seems to play effective defense. Frankly, the action scenes aren't all that great, given the importance of sword-fighting to the themes of the novel. However, they are better than the average. In a field where swords are always flashing, it is odd that the standard for writing a sword fight is so low. And the actual fighting is not as important to the story as it might be.Richard didn't create this system and he seems to have a respect for his art and a desire to fight capable opponents. He doesn't take trivial jobs anymore. But why would someone become a hired killer anyway? There are brutal stories in his background as well. And then there is his lover, Alec.Because Richard and Alec are at the center of the story, it is clear that Alec is a very sick and malignant individual. On the surface, he is a one stereotype of a suicidal, snide and malicious young man. This stereotype is often applied to gays. His worst trait is that he provokes people to insult or threaten him and is thrilled when Richard kills them. As the story unfolds, we see him show great loyalty to Richard and some ingenuity in solving the problem that besets Richard in the latter part of the book. Is this supposed to keep us from noticing that he is a psychopath or that Richard is happy to cooperate with his sickness?There are many fascinating minor characters in ths story as well. This book was not intended to have a sequel but there have been two written since, plus some short stories. The novel has three short stories bound with it as a bonus. They are very good.

I enjoyed this enormously. I have loved exquisite bitchiness since Dangerous Liaisons, and Swordspoint (of similar vintage) delivers it in spades. Our main purveyor is Alec, Richard St Vier's mysterious lover, who won’t speak of his past and who wanders the dangerous streets of Riverside looking for a fight. Yes, he likes watching master swordsman Richard kill for him, but there’s more going on - although for the longest time neither Richard nor I could be sure quite what. The layers of damage here are bruising; I didn’t like Alec, although I enjoyed him for his acidity.I didn’t like how he treated Richard, but it was a long time before I accepted that I shouldn’t like Richard either. He’s an excellent swordsman in part because he has no moral compass whatsoever. It’s a well-executed sleight of hand; Ellen Kushner had me firmly in her protagonist’s camp before I clocked just how arrogant, naive and vicious he actually is. And she’d done her job well: I still rooted for him, even though I couldn’t admire him.Then there’s the Duchess. The Duchess of Tremontaine isn’t the Marquise de Merteuil, because she’s too busy being herself: elegant, manipulative, the spider at the heart of the city’s web, orchestrating politics and passions with a twitch of her silken threads. She’s almost entirely off-screen, but her influence is everywhere. She’s overpowering. I love her to pieces.The other players: Michael Godwin, Lord Ferris, Lord Halliday, Lord Horn, are all arguably her pawns, but the novel largely plays out from their perspective. There was a moment when I found myself missing a female narrative point of view, but mostly I was relishing the measured prose and mannered insults too much. I enjoyed having no idea what the Duchess was up to (and indeed whether she was up to anything, or whether everyone just assumed she was).Ultimately, this is a character-driven novel of politics and manipulation. It relishes holding facts behinds its back in such a way that you know they’re there, even when you don’t know what they are. It excels at making terrible people terribly engaging. It’s not a high-stakes action epic, so people seeking plot-driven excitement may find that frustrating, but that didn’t bother me at all. The narrative pay-off at the end is immense - the wheels that have been spinning from the start result in startling choices and unexpected outcomes. The emotional aftermath is heart-breaking, with an open invitation to return for more.

Came across this via a review article on the Bisexual.org page on Facebook, and aside from most of the characters being incidentally bi (which was refreshing) the idea of swords and intrigue piqued my interest.So far, I quite enjoyed it. Though I did find the secondary and support characters far more interesting than the main protagonist, who I felt was somewhat one-dimensional and a little dull as a character, which was a little disappointing. But the other characters, even the bit parts, felt so much more interesting. And the over all plot and politics and intrigue did keep me turning the pages.This book does read a lot like a first attempt, and although it has it's short falls and a little clumsy in places, it is still an enjoyable read and a rather interesting setting. I definitely felt it worth giving a chance and have enjoyed overall reading through to the end, and look forward to the other two in the series.

I must declare a bias: I know the author. However, I read Tremontaine before that, and was pulled into this world. Tremontaine is a collaboration, set before the events in this book, and I recommend it highly.This is intricate, with subtexts that catch your attention and further the action. The emotions that drive the characters are never simple or single, and are very human.Read it, even if this genre is not normally your cup of tea.

Genuinely great characters, witty and well-written. One of the most absorbing relationships in fantasy fiction, you really do root for them rather than end up skimming the cliche romance bits (like I usually do when fantasy authors attempt romance). Quick, witty dialogue. Fairly good plot but underdeveloped world-building.

... it is very easy to step into the swing of things and you soon feel like you know the characters well. The most enigmatic point in the book is the relationship between Alec and St. Vier. The swordsman is both father and lover to the scholar, who seems so fragile, so exquisite... St. Vier is in effect a hired killer, but not without needs, showcased by his vulnerability before Alec and his respect from the citizens. The whole story is beautifully crafted and I would like to see more from this author!