Tuesday, May 8, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Privilege of the Sword by Ellen Kushner





The Privilege of the Sword is the stand-alone successor to Swordspoint, which I liked a lot when I reviewed it earlier this past month.  Honestly, I liked The Privilege of the Sword even more than Swordspoint, to the point where I toyed with the idea of giving it a perfect score.  It's that good, filled with wonderful new and old characters, a plot that teases and surprises, to form perhaps the best a "fantasy of manners" can possibly be.  It continues Swordspoint's theme of questioning just who has honor that is worth defending and tells a story in which all of the characters and plots tend to center around the right of everyone to make their own decisions about their own destinies.

Set 15 years after Swordspoint, TPotS does not require you to have read its predecessor (a few reviews I've seen of it from people who have started with this novel have not had any problems), but readers of Swordspoint will have greater enjoyment from seeing the return of several of the classic characters from the first book.  And since the first book is so good, I'd recommend you start there.  But even if you decide to start here instead, you'll be treated to a truly excellent story - a story about justice, about love, about honor, and more - that I absolutely loved.

Trigger Warning: Rape.  Again, like the last book I included such a warning in, this is not used gratuitously and in fact, the book directly addresses problematic attitudes toward victim blaming in the main plot, so it is very justified, but again, if you prefer to avoid books with the subject, you'll want to avoid this one.  


---------------------------------------------Plot Summary-------------------------------------------------
Katherine Talbert is the daughter of a poor but noble family who always thought she'd live an ordinary noble life, get to go to some balls, meet a handsome husband and marry well, etc.  But her family's impoverished state is largely a result of her uncle, the rich and powerful Mad Duke Tremontaine, who has tied up their funds with numerous lawsuits.  Until one day her family receives an offer: if Katherine will move in with her Uncle in the City for six months, remain out of contact with the rest of her family, and take up the ways of the Sword, he will end their financial woes.  With seemingly no choice, Katherine sets off for the City, figuring that at the very least while there she can enjoy the party and ball scene during the six months....

But her Uncle has different plans, and plans to make Katherine a serious Swordsman, who are used by Nobles in the City to defend others' honor....or who fight duels on a whim in the dangerous part of the City known as Riverside.   And in the process, Katherine begins to grow and figure out who she is and what she truly wants from her life, and what it means to really want something....and someone.

But most of all, what Katherine discovers, in a vicious world filled with plotting nobles, who often lack honor and a care for the feelings of others, that in having her taught the sword, she may have been given the greatest power of all: the ability to choose her own fate going forward and to defend herself against those who would seek to take that right....
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The above plot summary does not do a justice to this book. I've omitted basically every major character other than Katherine, including one character - Artemisia Fitz-Levi - whose point of view and story takes up 20-25% of the book, which intertwines with Katherine's story in the final two acts, as well as the main love interest, and of course, the Duke's significant other who returns from Swordspoint and plays an important role.  This book is primarily Katherine's story, but it is also the stories of several others, which intertwine with Katherine's story in the end to form a cohesive whole.  The result is a fantastic tale of justice, love, and honor that any plot summary I could come up with is going to not do it a proper justice.

If this book has a fault, it's that if you haven't read Swordspoint, I suspect the beginning reads a bit slow.  The secondary POV character, Artemisia, interacts with Katherine a few chapters into the book and then is entirely split off from the main plotline until about 60% of the way through during Part 3, and a reader who is brand new to this world might get a bit impatient with where her plotline is going in the first half, but this is at worst a minor quibble, and might not even be real (as I'd read Swordspoint first, I can't tell).  And that's basically all the bad I have to say about this book!

Because if you couldn't tell, this book does so much and yet somehow it all comes together wonderfully - whereas Swordspoint had a secondary subplot that kind of fizzled out, all of Privilege's subplots and character directions come together to form a perfectly satisfying whole.  Katherine's story is about a young woman growing up and learning to take charge of her own destiny and to take action to help others do so.  But it's also a story of her coming to terms with her own sexuality (like many if not all the characters in this world, she's bisexual) and her wants and loves.  And it's also a story about characters who decide that the world is wrong about who has honor, about who deserves respect and self-respect, and who take charge against those who would diminish women or people of lower classes.

This works because basically all of the characters work tremendously - obviously there's Katherine, who narrates much of the novel in first person (some of her chapters are not in first person, but the book does so in ways that I didn't realize it until a reread), but there's also the Mad Duke Alec (returning from Swordspoint), who's an incredibly fascinating character - insistent that people be allowed to choose their fate instead of being sold, more interested in both intellectual and carnal pursuits than that of the pursuit of wealth or noble respect, and still a crazy schemer.  Then there's Marcus, the Duke's assistant who blossoms into a companion for Katherine, Lucius Perry, a noble who Katherine and Marcus take interest in, and many more.   It helps that the dialogue is fantastic, often witty, but always believable, such that all the characters feel real despite many being larger than life (good lord, the Duke).

These characters essentially make up four plotlines - Katherine learning the way of the sword and growing up, Artemisia trying to find a husband only to find absolute horror in the world, Lucius Perry trying to challenge himself and also to be together with his lover, and the Duke plotting and scheming to ensure that no one goes through what he and his family did at their young ages.  And in the end these all come together in a way that makes a perfect whole, and as a bonus, resolves again the storyline of our heroes from Swordspoint - for those who have read that book first.

Again, barring reasons stemming from the trigger warning above, The Privilege of the Sword begs to be read by everyone, it's just that good.




Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)