Swordspoint
(subtitled a Melodrama of Manners
and published in 1987) is one of those books which I read not long after it
came out, and enjoyed enough to hang on to my copy ever since. This also
prompted me to buy the sequel, The
Privilege of the Sword, when it appeared almost twenty years later; it won
the 2007 Locus Award for the Best
Fantasy Novel. I have, finally, got around to reading PotS, and that prompted me to pick up SaMoM for a second read.
Swordspoint is
set in a fantasy world which is loosely equivalent, socially and
technologically, to the late Renaissance period in Europe; duelling with swords
is not just legal but is the accepted way of settling disputes among the ruling
class; however, they don't normally fight themselves – they hire professional
swordsmen to represent them. One such, and the most famous of them all, is the
young Richard St Vier. The story follows his unwilling involvement in the plots
of scheming nobles while maintaining a turbulent relationship with Alec, a
former student. The city setting is richly portrayed; the rough, dangerous and
colourful old Riverside area contrasting with the civilised Hill where the
nobility live. St Vier ends up facing a very different kind of fight in a
climactic scene of political struggle at a full meeting of the nobility.
There may have been a considerable gap before The Privilege of the Sword emerged, but
it's a slightly lesser one in "fiction time", as it is set fifteen
years after the events in SaMoM. We
meet again some of the characters from the first novel, but the focus is on a
new young heroine, Katherine, from a poor, country branch of one of the noble
families. We follow her progress as she fights – literally – to establish
herself both in high society and in Riverside. I found this a more enjoyable
tale than SaMoM, Katherine being an
engaging character it is easy to support and identify with (regardless of
gender!). Together, these two novels make a notable contribution to the more
thoughtful and intelligent end of the fantasy spectrum, and are well worth
seeking out.
This is not the end of the stories with the same setting. The Fall of the Kings (co-authored with
Delia Sherman, and based on an earlier novella with the same title) was published
in 2002 but is set a generation after the events in SaMoM and PotS. I gather
from decidedly mixed reviews that it doesn't bear much relationship to the
earlier works. In addition, there have been various short stories collectively
known as the Riverside series, and in
2015 Kushner created the Tremontaine
collaborative series, consisting so far of two "seasons" (E-books and
audiobooks only) of stories written by a range of different authors but all set
in a period before SaMoM.