Nunca más le hago caso a una recomendación de George R.R. Martin.Esta es la historia de Richard de Vier, una suerte de mercenario que trabaja de batirse a duelo con espadas en nombre de la persona que lo contrata. No tiene escrúpulos en matar a su contrincante si la situación lo amerita, y suele ser contratado por los nobles que viven en la Colina, la parte de la ciudad donde la ley aún existe... bastante.El libro irá alternando la historia de Richard con las historias de varios nobles, en una curiosa sucesión de eventos sin la menor importancia, diálogos intrascendentes y algo que me gustaría comenzar a llamar burocracia literaria... que no es otra cosa sino alargar eternamente el momento de que –por favor– ocurra algo que mueva la historia. Comienza bien, eso no lo puedo negar. Está escrito de forma poética, el primer capítulo es lindo y ya desde el principio deja ver con mucha naturalidad que el protagonista parece estar en pareja con otro hombre. Richard y Alec viven juntos en un sector marginal de la ciudad, conocido como La Ribera. Allí a la gente le encanta presenciar duelos y ver correr sangre, y Richard mata con una facilidad pasmosa así que les da un show bastante seguido. Que Alec parezca tener por hobbie provocar a la gente para que Richard tenga que batirse (y en lo posible a muerte) colabora bastante con eso. También colabora a que Alec caiga considerablemente mal, sumado a que es desagradable, egoísta, soberbio y morboso.Richard no es ninguna joya tampoco, la verdad que entre los dos no se hace uno. Sin embargo, la relación entre ambos no me terminó de quedar clara durante buena parte del libro, ya que la misma autora muchas veces nombra a Alec como "el amigo" de Richard, y muy pocas veces como "el amante". Cuando finalmente se esclareció, me di cuenta de que la relación que tienen es horrible. Quizás porque ellos son horribles. Son de esos personajes que lisa y llanamente, caen mal.Por otro lado tenemos a los nobles que viven en La Colina. Éste es un mundo muy muy muy rococó, sus habitantes son todos viciosos, egoístas y desagradables... y tienen un sistema político que durante la mayor parte del libro me resultó más confuso e inentendible que otra cosa. Sólo me quedaba claro que había mucha gente intentando conseguir más poder a base de hacer rodar cabezas... literalmente.Pero lo que realmente harán todo estos nobles, además de confundirme sobre quién es realmente el protagonista de la historia de tanto que aparecen, será hablar. Y acostarse entre ellos (o tratar de). Y comer.Al comienzo del libro hay una pelea interesante... y va a ser una de las pocos que vamos a ver. Para la novela llamarse A punta de espada, hay una curiosa falta de duelos.Lo que si hay, y muchísimo, es diálogos. Diálogos que no dirán absolutamente nada, que alargarán los momentos hasta el límite de lo alargable, y que contribuirán de forma muy eficaz a que uno se maree y no entienda gran cosa de lo que está ocurriendo. Eso cuando de hecho está ocurriendo algo.Noté con horror que en esos pocos momentos en que realmente se cuenta algo importante, ocurre a tal velocidad (máximo tres párrafos) que a veces uno pasa de largo y tiene que releer.Antes de tomar una decisión sobre algo (que produzca una mínima acción) lo piensan, y lo hablan, y lo siguen pensando, y se van de tema... y se dan una semana para responder... y luego se ponen a especular con cómo la otra persona puede llegar a reaccionar, y a hacerse toda una película de cosas que al final son sólo imaginación de los personajes... y entonces siguen conversando de cosas que luego no aportan nada a la historia, y siguen hablando... Y en la práctica no ocurre nada. Nada. Creo que si tuviera que marcar los eventos ¿importantes? de la historia, no serían más de diez. Pasado el 25% del libro aún no había ocurrido nada digno de mención. En el capítulo 12, más o menos el 35% del libro, la historia empieza a mejorar, y hay de hecho ciertas partes que son buenas y/o entretenidas. Pero no duran. Ese estilo poético que me gustaba al principio muy pronto se vuelve una molestia. Se interrumpe la no-historia para hacer descripciones y más descripciones (y seguir especulando y exteriorizando los pensamientos de los personajes) y la historia OH POR DIOS NO AVANZA.Además, a la autora le encanta usar el curioso adjetivo 'cremoso', y lo usa para describir cosas que jamás hubiera imaginado como cremosas. Sí podríamos decir que su forma de escribir es... cremosa. Además de peligrosamente recargada. Estaba desesperada por terminarlo, un sentimiento que no debería inspirar ningúna novela.Y entonces se termina de golpe.Mi edición por desgracia tenía dos historias más, la primera de ellas bastante inconexa, y la otra un intento de deprimirnos con lo que se podría llamar un golpe bajo. Este es un libro que se vende como fantasía, así que mientras iba leyendo y avanzando, aburriéndome y deseando que por favor ocurriera algo, todo lo que podía pensar "¿y la fantasía cuándo llega?". La respuesta es simple: nunca. Lo único que tiene de fantasioso es que la historia está ambientada en una ciudad inexistente (así que queda descartado 'ficción histórica'), donde las leyes son muy laxas y la mayor parte de la población parece ser abiertamente bisexual. Hasta los nombres de los personajes son comunes y corrientes. No hay magia, no hay dragones, no hay ni siquiera una curandera que trate los callos plantales con pasto masticado.Me acordé mucho de George R.R. Martin mientras lo leía. Nunca más le hago caso. Nunca. Más.Reseña de Fantasía MágicaBuddy Read en Emma's Tea Party
I picked this up for a couple of euro in one of my favourite second-hand bookshops because I'd heard it recommended numerous times on my flist. Cheesy fantasy novel cover aside (as a side note, exactly why must the covers of 99% of fantasy books be so fantastically appalling?), the descriptions I'd heard of it made it seem as if the book was tailor-made to appeal to me. A well-written, slashy, historical fantasy-of-manners - what's not to like?Well, quite a lot, as it turns out. If the blurb by Neil Gaiman on the back cover is true - that this was the best fantasy novel of 1988 - then the fantasy novels published in 1988 weren't all that much to write home about, I think.This is not to say that Swordspoint is badly written. It's not. It's quite competently written, in fact; but that's all. There were a couple of nicely written passages, but I never really got the impression that Kushner rose above the average throughout the book. It's also probably an indication more of how much fanfic I read than how prevalent it actually was, but I was also really irked by how often (it seemed) she talked about characters' eye colours, and how much she used epithets. I am perfectly aware that they can come in useful when dealing with two characters who are the same sex; but constantly referring to Richard as 'the swordsman' does tend to wear after a while.However, my main issue with the book was the fact that it came across as Les Liaisons Dangereuses-by-numbers. There are attempts at witty, subtle, layered dialogue; treacherous, unscrupulous, amoral characters; hot sex. In fact, Kushner tries to include almost everything that makes Les Liaisons Dangereuses such a delicious pleasure to read. She lacks the finesse in combining everything which made Choderlos de Laclos' book work, though.Richard and Alec are, for the most part, boringly flat. For a potentially lethal swordsman who has no qualms about killing, Richard is remarkably unmenacing, while for an unstable aristocrat, Alec is remarkably boring. The plot is very see through, and Kushner seems to have a thing for twisting the characters to fit the plot, rather than letting the character's development affect the story. For instance, I am really, really unable to see any reason why Alec and Richard are together and stay together other than for the necessities of the plot. The rapier-sharp dialogue which I'm sure Kushner was aiming for was also a much blunter sword than the author would wish, I think. A lot of the time, it had the laborious feel of someone who sat around a lot coming up with witty epigrams to come up with at a moment's notice - much more Mr Collins than Elizabeth Bennet, I'm afraid.I'm also pretty certain that, were the Marquise de Merteuil and the Duchess Tremontaine ever to meet, the Marquise would be able to rip the Duchess to shreds without exerting herself one little bit.I'm not not recommending this book - a lot of people whose reading tastes normally gel with mine really seem to love it - but it left me cold.
What do You think about Swordspoint (2003)?
This was a hard book for me to read. It is undeniably brilliantly written, with characters that go down and down and a world that extends well belong the edge of the page. It is true, there is no magic as so many people insist on having in their fantasy worlds, but the world we get glimpses of is certainly not this one, so there is nowhere else to market it but the fantasy shelves. That depth and realism is extremely rare, and definitely to be commended: every single character whose viewpoint we see (and the viewpoint shifts frequently and with no formatting flourishes like line or chapter breaks) is damaged, driven by wants and needs that we get mere glimpses of. It is really an incredible feat for an author to accomplish: every time the viewpoint shifts the reader can see how the person whose actions we are following is acting in the way he or she thinks is right or justified. Knowing what we know of what else is going on, we can see how the person is short-sighted, or is playing into someone else's hands, or is simply an idiot; but every single person has his or her reasons and, given his or her state of knowledge and desired goals, is justified.This, unfortunately, is what made the book so extremely hard to read. Because it takes place among an aristocratic class that does nothing but play politics with their own and other peoples' lives, the only viewpoint that was restful, the only person whose goals and needs were simple and straightforward, the only person who acted consistently with what we normally consider honor in a fantasy novel, was the swordsman Richard St. Vier. His was the most common viewpoint, as it is his story being told, but it was not often enough to prevent the novel from feeling like a tragedy to me, rather than the comedy I was led to believe it was. This was partly aided by the fact that something I read online about it gave away what I think was actually supposed to be a twist in the middle of the story, but I think even without that spoiler I would still have been left feeling unsettled by this novel. It clashes with my view of the world. I made my philosophical choice years ago, and I chose to believe that the world is ultimately a decent place, where people occasionally have misunderstandings, but these misunderstandings can be ironed out if we give honest communication and empathy a try. I do not want to live in a world like the one Kushner so lovingly detailed, where every man is an island to himself and the only choice is who you want to be used by and how. There is too much power in this novel and not enough love, and even the love that is in it is based in mutual conquest rather than in mutual surrender. It is a dark novel, an ugly one, but one that will undoubtedly stay with me for a long time.
—Phoenixfalls
Swordspoint is a fantasy novel set in an unnamed city that is roughly divided into two parts: the Hill, where the nobility live, and Riverside, home to the less fortunate inhabitants of the town. The city is governed by a council of nobles, and those nobles have a tendency to fight among themselves; however, they don't pick up swords themselves but hire swordsmen to fight their fights for them.The main character of the book is such a swordsmen: Richard St Vier. He is extraordinarily talented: the best of the best, and never loses a fight. Like the majority of this world, he is bisexual, and he is currently living with his lover, Alec. (More to that part in a second.) Richard is in a situation where he can choose which jobs to take and which not; in the course of the book he becomes entangled in various intrigues of the nobility. The volume I have contains the novel as well as three short stories set in the same world as the novel; it also contains an extract from the follow-up novel The Fall of the Kings.At the beginning of the book there is a number of quotes, one of them by Neil Gaiman, saying: "Swordspoint was the best fantasy novel of 1989." Well, I have to say that if Swordspoint really was the best fantasy novel of that year, I don't want to read any of the others. [Which reminds me of something: is it just me or do the 80s seem more recent than they actually are? I mean, 1989 used to be just a couple of years ago, and now it's almost 20.]It's not a bad book: the world Kushner created is actually rather interesting. The problem is that it reads to me like mediocre fanfiction - you know the kind: somewhat OOC characterization, no great plot, weakish sex scenes, but nothing jarringly bad enough to make you stop reading. In fact, it really did feel like fanfiction to some other book or movie, and it's that other book that I'd love to read.The plot is very confusing and not exactly exciting: mostly politics, which can be interesting, but not the way it's portrayed here. The resolution in the end felt very construed, but it did make a certain degree of sense. One storyline felt somewhat unfinished; since it was the most interesting one that was particularly disappointing. The novel itself was boring except for two or three scenes, but I read it through to the end. As I said, it's like mediocre fanfiction - it's not so bad you have to stop so you read on and on until you reach a certain point where you might as well finish it.Richard as a character could be quite fascinating, for example, but throughout the book he remains flat. I wanted to like him, maybe even love him, but I never felt like I got to know him. And then there is Alec, who I never understood, at least not in the main book. (One of the three stories at the end was quite touching, and the one where I felt actual sympathy for him.) Most of the time, you only get glimpses of his personality, which don't make sense. Which can be interesting, but in this case it felt like clumsy writing rather than a complex personality.As for the slash factor: Well. A big minus for me was that Alec and Richard's relationship is an established one. I like the anticipation of the falling-in-love and getting-together kind of romance. And in this case this was especially bad because I never got why they were together. Alec is such a basket case I never understood what Richard sees in him, and althought I got that he was supposed to be in love with him I never felt it. Richard has to fight all the time to keep Alec save (mostly from Alec himself.), and it's clear from the beginning that Alec has some sort of Secret (and I can tell you right now that he wasn't a prostitute and can tell left from right), and of course it's that secret that tears the lovers apart for a while.The sex scenes were very confusingly and clumsily written. I'd say they're PG-13 at the utmost, and not very erotic. (Especially one where Alec is showing his basket-case-ness.) I really was missing an emotional connection for most of the time. I think the book on the whole suffers from a lack of showing and an excess of telling.What was very well written were the swordfights, and that is part of the reason why I'm giving it two and a half stars. There is also Michael, my favourite character and a much more apt choice for Richard, in my opinion. I also did like the world, and the characters do have potential, even though it wasn't used.Of the three short stories, the third one was written last, and since it was the best one I have hopes that her later books are better as well. There I could make a connection, so maybe I'll give her other books set in that world a chance at a later point.
—Sophie
I don't normally read sword fighting adventures, so when I first picked this up I said "If it's not gay by the end of the first chapter, I'm not going to continue." Lo and behold, by the end of chapter one our (male) hero returns to his room at an inn he shares with his boyfriend.[return][return]This book both bucks genre conventions and plays with them in interesting ways. The society beauties are male, and that gender flip plays out in different ways than it does with women. This book is engaging, interesting and I defied my expectations in all the best ways.
—Julia
