Review: Swordspoint

This seems to be the season for re-reading classic SF and fantasy, and I'm enjoying it vastly. From Poul Anderson (The Van Rijn Method) to Frank Herbert (Dune) and Robert Heinlein (Starman Jones), this voyage through the past of a genre I adore has been a lot of fun. So much fun, I don't see myself stopping anytime soon! So let's take a look at a fantasy which was a standout novel in its day.

Here's a seriously good read that came out in the mainstream press in the late 1980s, published by Arbor House in 1987. Ellen Kushner was out on a limb ... her bio says she was very well connected in the industry, so she could probably afford the risk. 

Also, to be fair, and thorough, Anne Rice (who sadly passed away just a couple of days before I find myself writing this ... a sad loss to the world or literature in general and vampires in particular) had "broken trail" with her epic stories of vampire stories and Cry to Heaven, but Kushner was going in different directions .. lgbt fantasy.

There's still a dire shortage. Have you ever tried to hunt down something like Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones, where the love interest is between the heroes? Like an lgbt version of Conan the Barbarian, or Ladyhawke, for instance. Few lgbt writers seem to have an affinity for fantasy worlds, and more's the pity.

So, Swordspoint was unique in two ways when it appeared. It has overt lgbt relationships -- gasp! In a book released by a mainstream publisher back in those days! -- and its story is set in a fantasy realm.

(Other lgbt fantasy novels I'm thinking of are The Swordsman and The Lords of Harbendane, both by Keegan; The Last Herald Mage series by Lackey; the Nightrunner series by Flewelling ... and so on. But all too soon you'll find yourself drifting off into SF, worlds of the weird, flat-out erotica, vampires, zombies, anything but "pure" fantasy as I'll always think of it. Call me old fashioned.)

It was a nice surprise when Swordspoint came along. It's a "literary" kind of fantasy, so if you were hoping for a "down and dirty, raunchy, sword-swinging, dragon-slaying gay romp", this isn't the book for you. Swordspoint has a quasi-Sixteenth Century Europe, court of the Medici sort of setting, with Oscar Wilde's style of dialog, a sophisticated fantasy backdrop, and characters whose sensual preference leans toward the lgbt. A comedy of manners, as well as errors. 

It's not explicit, and it is delightful. The plot concerns intrigue, courtly characters, menace and danger. The central character is the gorgeous Richard St. Vier, a duellist, and there's enough action, drama and derring do to satisfy someone whose other guilty pleasure is, uh, Errol Flynn. (In fact, Gene Wolf said in his review of this novel, this is "the book we might have had if Noel Coward had written a vehicle for Errol Flynn." Very cool indeed.)

If the novel has a downside, it's that it's sometimes inclined to get a bit too clever with the repartee and witty, Coward/Wilde style dialog. In today's world this tends to make dialog sound "stilted" -- people don't talk that way. You wonder if they ever actually did. 

In all honesty, this can make the book a tad hard to get through in patches, also making it a little difficult to identify with the characters, who can occasionally seem "artificial." The era of Coward and Wild was closer at hand, when Swordspoint was written; readers then were a great deal more forgiving than they tend to be today, which is a shame. 

If you can't get your head around anything that's faded out of the cotemporary voice, you're missing vast oceans of wonderful reading. (A friend of mine says she can't even watch a movie or tv show that's more than ten years old -- it's just too old for her. This underscores the problem, and I'll say it again: what a shame.) 

If you get past this (the problem being, if you skip whole pages you'll miss the details that drive the plot), the book has some great characters, such as Richard's boyfriend, Alec, and Lord Horn, who loves to party. The story will hold you, from the "once upon a time" beginning to the "feet on the fender" comfortable ending.

The novel is literary, and if you were hoping for those steamy scenes which would become commonplace in so-called "m/m" romance -- sorry. However, Swordspoint is delightful as well as subtle, and if you like Oscar Wilde and Noel Coward, the dialog does sparkle. I do, so I enjoyed it a great deal when it was new, and I was given the hardcover as a gift. Rereading it, I discover, I still do. 

A whole series spun off this first episode, but I've never been able to find any of the titles in Australia. he series goes by the title of Riverside, and has been called "A Melodrama of Manners," in various editions. 

The series is definitely on my list of books-to-get, when I get around to it, and if I can ever afford the high price of collecting unusual books that have to be airmailed around the world! This is the downside of living in Australia, I know. As I mentioned, I was lucky enough to receive this first episode as a gift, when the book was brand new and still causing a stir in literary circles because of its audacity, back in the day. Picture, if you will, a swordfight fantasy with lgbt heroes and a delicate, lovely romance. To quote Georg Takei, who is absurdly apropos in this context, "Oh, my!"