So I finished reading these books ages ago. Kristen was kind enough to do all the legwork of getting the links and pics in place here, and get the post ready for me to fill in the actual review content. And then I didn’t do it. I mean, these books were part of the same pile as the last book review set I did! So I read them all well over a month ago.
Better late than never, right? So here we go.
The first book in this set was Ellen Kushner‘s excellent Swordspoint. It was a wonderful tale of a world where bravoes lived by the sword and fought for the amusement of petty nobles, and a single duelist, the astounding St. Vier, was the pinnacle of the art of the sword. Then came the somewhat less good The Fall of The Kings, set in the same world but much earlier, laying the groundwork for the world of the first book. Somehow more muddled and less satisfying, less full of panache really, it didn’t work as well. Now comes a third book, The Privilege of the Sword, and it’s a return to form in many ways — the tale of a young girl who is brought to the capital not as a debutante, but by her mad uncle (a returning character from Swordspoint) to learn to handle the sword. It still has the flavor of decadence and the surprising sweetness of the other books, but the young and ornery protagonist helps quite a lot to make it a lighter and less involved tale than the last book. If you liked Swordspoint (and really, most fantasy fans should have at least read it) I suspect you’ll like this one too.
