Of Swords and Parasols

Richard St. Vier is a swordsman-for-hire in Riverside, an unsavory district in an unnamed capital city, where he lives with and indulges his lover, Alec, a scholar. On the surface Richard is an unassuming man, but also a deadly one who takes contracts from noblemen to fight duels to the death.

The book is mannerpunk, a fantasy subgenre where our heroes don’t face magic or foreign invaders, but society and peers. By necessity, this also means that Riverside itself is almost a character, and I always approve of City as Character*. We also have swashbuckling, abductions, revenge quests, wit, plot twists, and politics. Many of my favorite things.

I liked the book a good bit, but suspect I would have liked it more if I hadn’t read so much fantasy that’s obviously influenced by it, which is always a danger when you read or watch something influential years after the fact. I also had a problem liking…well, pretty much anyone but Richard. Except for Michael (who I found both dull and irritating, not to mention my annoyance with how much of the book’s conflict seemed to stem from his rejecting a suitor he was encouraging until he learned they were unattractive) pretty much all the characters were interesting, which is good enough for me, but I didn’t like them much. I didn’t even like Richard as much as I thought I should, but eventually I realized that part of the mad love I usually have for characters like him was the lengths they go to for the people they care about. While Richard certainly didn’t let me down in that regard, I didn’t like Alec nearly as much as I usually do the person the “hero” is going to great lengths for, which tends to be a contributing factor. I don’t dislike Alec, and I realize he isn’t really quite right in the head, but I don’t think I ever quite got over the bit early on where we learned that Alec likes to annoy people so they’ll challenge him and then he can watch Richard kill them.

As usual, I think iIm coming across as more critical than I actually feel about it., but I did like it, and the world.  I understand Kushner has other stories set in this world. Opinions of them?

*Yes, it’s a district, not the city. But if I think about that, then I’ll start tearing my hair out about how the city doesn’t have a name, which took me about 200 pages to get over.