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hrjIt must be understood from the first that this review is all about me, me, me. It's about my wants and needs as a reader and only secondarily about the inherent quality of the story. You have been warned.
The Privilege of the Sword is the book I've been waiting for Ellen Kushner to write ever since I read Swordspoint. Maybe. You see, I have this weird little quirk. I get quite illogically torqued at talented, eloquent, out lesbian fantasy writers who seem to spend most of their time writing gay male protagonists. Ok, ok, I know that Kushner disavows the label "gay" for the protagonists of Swordspoint -- I believe on the basis that it has a specific socio-historical context that is irrelevant to the setting of her novels. But it's much too convenient as a shorthand for "persons whose primary emotional and sexual attachments are to persons of the same gender" so we'll all just have to cope. Anyway, so Swordspoint (and The Fall of the Kings) torqued me (and in the same way, for example, a certain amount of Melissa Scott's fantasy work torques me) because here's an author who has the skills and background to write books that would just knock my socks off and I feel like I'm being betrayed in some essential way. (I warned you that this review was all about me.)
So when I spotted PotS I snatched it up and moved it to the top of my reading list (even above the two books I'm currently in the middle of). The story takes place in the same setting as Swordspoint and Fall of the Kings, although with more connections to the former, concerning the niece of the protagonist of Swordspoint (the latter hereinafter referred to as "the Mad Duke"), one Katherine Talbert, who is unexpectedly whisked into a world that's one part Georgette Heyer, one part Alexandre Dumas, and one part Baudelaire. Her uncle promptly starts having her trained as a professional swordsman and she falls into various adventures culminating in duels, chases, intrigues, and revenge. It's a delightful romp and a fun read and it probably wouldn't do to look too far beyond that. (But I had to look.)
We'll start off by acknowledging the motif of the inexperienced adolescent who picks up swordfighting skills with astonishing ease and speed. If the protagonist were a young man it would be an unremarkable literary device, so I refrain from stumbling on it. (And the story acknowledges that she wins her first two duels at least partly from not being taken seriously, rather than pure skill.) No issues here.
The "braided viewpoint" structure that appears in Kushner's previous works is featured again here, with Katherine's viewpoint being first person and others third person. But instead of providing glimpses and angles to keep the plot moving in non-obvious ways, the POV cuts seem disjointed and arbitrary. To use a textile metaphor, the various strands seem to be barely thrown, not even spun, much less braided. There's a wide assortment of interesting characters: some a legacy of previous stories, some new to this one. Too many of them seem to be left dangling from the plot -- brought in to fill some necessary background role, but too developed for wallpaper and not resolved sufficiently for characters we're supposed to care about. In an odd way, it feels as if Kushner is writing a piece of fan-fic in her own universe -- throwing favorite characters together for the pleasure of watching them interact with less care for the overall integrity of the story.
In fact, resolution is a problem in general. The book takes 360 pages to work up to a complex, multi-layered, suspenseful crisis point ... and then resolves it and ties everything up neatly like a Christmas package in the last 15 pages. It's as if, having had fun developing the characters and playing with the set-up, the author got bored and took the shortest route from point B to the exit. If I were feeling optimistic, I'd say that PotS would make a good starting place for the real stories that are waiting to be told about Katherine, but I don't get the feeling that they will be.
So we're left with a fluffy little swashbuckling lesbian adventure, right? Well, not really. Oh, we're handed a whole slew of signifiers setting up expectations. We've got the gender-role-bending (conveniently chalked up to the Mad Duke's penchant for the shocking and unconventional). We have Katherine's sexual epiphany when watching two actresses making out. We have the innocent crush on a female friend disguised as a fiercely protective impulse. And yet, at the end of the day, Katherine's only sexual experiences in the entire novel are heterosexual. The hinted-at potential romance with the female friend is left as an ambiguous tease. Even leaving aside the objections regarding socio-historical context, and even using the most broadly generous bisexual-inclusive definition of "gay", Katherine has far more plausible deniability as a "gay character" than the (male) protagonists of Kushner's previous books in this world.
Sure, you can argue, the author has the right to create whatever sorts of characters she wants to. But this review is all about me. And I was left feeling rather cheated of the book I wanted to have been reading.
The Privilege of the Sword is the book I've been waiting for Ellen Kushner to write ever since I read Swordspoint. Maybe. You see, I have this weird little quirk. I get quite illogically torqued at talented, eloquent, out lesbian fantasy writers who seem to spend most of their time writing gay male protagonists. Ok, ok, I know that Kushner disavows the label "gay" for the protagonists of Swordspoint -- I believe on the basis that it has a specific socio-historical context that is irrelevant to the setting of her novels. But it's much too convenient as a shorthand for "persons whose primary emotional and sexual attachments are to persons of the same gender" so we'll all just have to cope. Anyway, so Swordspoint (and The Fall of the Kings) torqued me (and in the same way, for example, a certain amount of Melissa Scott's fantasy work torques me) because here's an author who has the skills and background to write books that would just knock my socks off and I feel like I'm being betrayed in some essential way. (I warned you that this review was all about me.)
So when I spotted PotS I snatched it up and moved it to the top of my reading list (even above the two books I'm currently in the middle of). The story takes place in the same setting as Swordspoint and Fall of the Kings, although with more connections to the former, concerning the niece of the protagonist of Swordspoint (the latter hereinafter referred to as "the Mad Duke"), one Katherine Talbert, who is unexpectedly whisked into a world that's one part Georgette Heyer, one part Alexandre Dumas, and one part Baudelaire. Her uncle promptly starts having her trained as a professional swordsman and she falls into various adventures culminating in duels, chases, intrigues, and revenge. It's a delightful romp and a fun read and it probably wouldn't do to look too far beyond that. (But I had to look.)
We'll start off by acknowledging the motif of the inexperienced adolescent who picks up swordfighting skills with astonishing ease and speed. If the protagonist were a young man it would be an unremarkable literary device, so I refrain from stumbling on it. (And the story acknowledges that she wins her first two duels at least partly from not being taken seriously, rather than pure skill.) No issues here.
The "braided viewpoint" structure that appears in Kushner's previous works is featured again here, with Katherine's viewpoint being first person and others third person. But instead of providing glimpses and angles to keep the plot moving in non-obvious ways, the POV cuts seem disjointed and arbitrary. To use a textile metaphor, the various strands seem to be barely thrown, not even spun, much less braided. There's a wide assortment of interesting characters: some a legacy of previous stories, some new to this one. Too many of them seem to be left dangling from the plot -- brought in to fill some necessary background role, but too developed for wallpaper and not resolved sufficiently for characters we're supposed to care about. In an odd way, it feels as if Kushner is writing a piece of fan-fic in her own universe -- throwing favorite characters together for the pleasure of watching them interact with less care for the overall integrity of the story.
In fact, resolution is a problem in general. The book takes 360 pages to work up to a complex, multi-layered, suspenseful crisis point ... and then resolves it and ties everything up neatly like a Christmas package in the last 15 pages. It's as if, having had fun developing the characters and playing with the set-up, the author got bored and took the shortest route from point B to the exit. If I were feeling optimistic, I'd say that PotS would make a good starting place for the real stories that are waiting to be told about Katherine, but I don't get the feeling that they will be.
So we're left with a fluffy little swashbuckling lesbian adventure, right? Well, not really. Oh, we're handed a whole slew of signifiers setting up expectations. We've got the gender-role-bending (conveniently chalked up to the Mad Duke's penchant for the shocking and unconventional). We have Katherine's sexual epiphany when watching two actresses making out. We have the innocent crush on a female friend disguised as a fiercely protective impulse. And yet, at the end of the day, Katherine's only sexual experiences in the entire novel are heterosexual. The hinted-at potential romance with the female friend is left as an ambiguous tease. Even leaving aside the objections regarding socio-historical context, and even using the most broadly generous bisexual-inclusive definition of "gay", Katherine has far more plausible deniability as a "gay character" than the (male) protagonists of Kushner's previous books in this world.
Sure, you can argue, the author has the right to create whatever sorts of characters she wants to. But this review is all about me. And I was left feeling rather cheated of the book I wanted to have been reading.
