book review--Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner

[pennie_dreadful]

 

Swordspoint is one of the classic cases where I build my expectations up only to have them knocked down.  I wanted to like it; I wanted to love it, since I read it's sequel, The Fall of the Kings, and thought it was amazing.  But this...ordinarily I would give a plot summary first, but that's next to impossible because this book's plot, such as it is, is all over the place and hardly discernable.  That is, once it actually got going.  I got to page 93 and began to wonder, okay, what is supposed to be going on here?  

The two people in the book you need to know about are Richard St Vier, an expert swordsman-for-hire, and his lover, the mysterious and scholarly Alec.  Alec is probably a member of the nobility, but he never says, and Richard never asks.  Frankly one of the huge disappointments about the book is the relationship between Richard and Alec.  I found myself wondering, time and again, just what is Richard's attraction to Alec?  He's annoying, petulant, self serving, manipulative, self destructive...really, he had no redeeming qualities that I could see.  But for some reason Richard decides he needs to protect him.  Alec trades endlessly off of Richard's reputation, deliberatly picking fights and making enemies, just so he can get Richard to kill them.  

And Richard, if anything, was even more disappointing than Alec.  What is his motivation?  Why does he risk his life for the sake of some idiot nobles who pick quarrells with each other and set swordsmen at each other's throats, instead of doing their own dirty work?  There is hardly any character growth and developement going on with them, no interesting flashbacks where we learn more about their histories and how they ended up where they are.  There was however, one character that I ended up liking.  But he wasn't a huge part of the action, and I really didn't see why he was in the book as much as he was, other than to serve as a convenient plot device.  But it was highly frustrating, to see Kushner take a character who comes off as badly as he does in the beginning, and turn him into someone halfway likable, and then end the story before we find out what ever happens to him! 

I admit that sometimes it's nice to read a book where the kingdom isn't in dire peril and needs rescuing.  I love gritty, political books that are full of intrigue.  That is Swordspoint's one redeeming grace.  It certainly doesn't disappoint on that score.  And once I was well through the first half of the book and could see where it going (finally), I enjoyed it a bit more...but I still thought the rest of it was terrible. 

 X posted to 

epicfantasy


A review of The Fall of the Kings is forthcoming, after I eat lunch.