♦ What I Liked: Once again I enjoyed the uniqueness of this tale. Unlike book one, magic plays a big role in this adventure, though mainly as a subject of debate with tantalizing hints as to its validity.The story centers around Theron Campion and his University mentor/lover. Theron has many of the qualities of his father, Alec. He is an enigma when it comes to personality. Sometimes blindly passionate, sometimes easily led, insecure but with the arrogance that comes from a being member of the upper class, he often wavers between loyalties. His lover however, the handsome professor Basil St. Cloud, is more single minded in his pursuits. Whether is the search for historical truth or romancing his soulmate, Dr. St. Cloud throws all of his attention into his current task to the exclusion of all else.I also liked the political aspect. It is a true fact that history is rewritten by the victors and this tale brings that lesson home in a big way. Truth is not always welcome, especially when it challenges current opinion. Basil St. Cloud has an uphill battle as he attempts to prove that not only did magic exist in the past, but there is a vital need for it to come into play again.And it is much more than politics, romance or even magic. There are layers upon layers of story as complicated and unbalanced as the society itself. Loyalties change frequently as the players in this melodrama try to choose a side. Betrayal, deceit, broken hearts and secrets test each player on this theatrical stage. Bonds are formed and bonds are broken. Lies are told and truths are spoken. And all the while ancient mystical forces are behind the scene leading the dance.Sometimes humorous, sometimes tragic, but rarely boring, this story has alot to say.♦ What I didn't like: Because this tale takes place many years past the events that took place in book one, I often felt a bit lost. There were too many interesting characters, a number of them very strong women, whose story I wanted to know more about. I would have been in worse shape if the short stories included in Swordspoint hadn't provided a bit of a lead in, but even with that, the lead in was incomplete. Interesting enough, I did get a good amount of fascinating detail on the history of Riverside. Unfortunately I did not get much background on the current players in this drama.I also wish I had known a bit more about the lore regarding the "Great Hunt." I vaguely remember it being associated with druids. (I think) The basic premise having to do with Kings being bound by blood to the land in a series of rituals which included a hunt for a horned stag. Now here is my problem. I could have looked it up but that would have meant pulling out of the book to research well... the book. Again I felt like I was missing information that would have greatly enhanced the story. As it was, I muddled along as best I could.♦ Conclusion: I can't say in all honesty that I loved this book. Liked it, yes, loved it, no. I kept wishing it was about Jessica, Theron's pirate sister, or Sophia, Theron's physician mother, the first woman ever to hold a chair in the University or even his strong-willed aunt Katherine, the Duchess of Tremontaine, who was an excellent swordswoman and a fierce matriarch.Now, from what I read in the Afterword of Swordpoint, Ellen Kushner actually started writing the third book, which is set only 15 years after Swordspoint, before writing and publishing The Fall of Kings with Delia Sherman. It appears that Priviledge of the Sword is indeed written about Katherine. I have a feeling, gleaned from the parts she played in this drama, I am going to love her story. What I am questioning now is if I should have read them out of order. I'll have to let you know.Source: Dragons, Heroes and Wizards
This is a real treat, a wonderful performance of a very enjoyable book.Set in the world of Ellen Kushner's Swordspoint and The Privilege of the Sword, it's about forty or fifty years after Privilege. Katherine is Duchess Tremontaine, and Theron, Alec's posthumous son from his very late marriage to Sofia, now a physician and a Doctor of the University, is her heir presumptive.He's also young, romantic, a poet, and an eternal student, flitting from one field of study to another, currently studying rhetoric. His heart broken (most recently) by the artist Isolde, who painted him for a year and then was done with him, he meets the dynamic young magister, Doctor of History Basil St. Cloud.St. Cloud doesn't know this about himself yet, but he's a budding radical, a specialist in ancient history who is starting to go back to primary sources, and beginning to suspect that the despised wizards that the equally despised "mad" ancient kings brought south with them were not all charlatans and frauds.When St. Cloud, trouble-making scholar, and Theron Campion, descendant of Duke David, the killer of the last king, but also of that last king's sister, fall in love, they set in motion political and emotional upheaval that will rock the city.We see parts of city life absent from the earlier novels, and an exploration of why, until now, these have been fantasy novels without magic. We finally get some sense of the larger kingdom, and how it works for those who are neither the privileged class nor the Riversiders.The performance is in every way excellent. The voices are well matched to their characters, with sound effects and transitional music that enhance the sense of being drawn into the world of the story.Highly recommended.I bought this book.
What do You think about The Fall Of The Kings (2003)?
I quite enjoyed this fantasy, about the re-awakening of magic in a world of skeptics, where magic is treasonous. The characters were quite good and the romance was pleasant enough.I think the strength of the novel was in portraying the academic community and all of the back-biting and political manoeuvring that happened there. It was easy to love Basil St. Cloud in this atmosphere for having the morals and love of learning to try to rise above all of it.The rabble-rousing student-life is beautifully written. I loved that the students brawled over knowledge in the streets and the many pubs and bars each associated with a specific academic discipline and set of students.The senseless tragedy of the ending was a bit disappointing, but I don't see how it could have been resolved differently, given the way the social and political environment clashed so horribly with the mysticism St. Cloud and his lover were trying to reignite.I guess it's the magic itself I found somewhat disappointing. Who wants to have to go stark-raving in order to cast some spells and be a king? I know I'm supposed to sympathize wholly with the two lovers here, but I am personally quite sympathetic to the other side of things. I'm still ambivalent to the kings and wizards, despite St. Cloud's best rhetorical efforts. I don't find myself willing to believe the kings and wizards were so benevolent and harmless given the quality of the madness the main characters experience.
—Mary-Beth
This was a frustrating one! I love little more than academia in a fantasy setting, and a climactic sequence begun by a scholarly debate is sooo up my street--but what dreadful pacing it turned out to have. This book takes a pleasant road but a slow one towards its destination, and when you finally reach the book's pivotal moment it's so rushed that it's robbed of all its power. The relationship between the two leads gets so much focus, only to have its purpose shoved from "character development" to "ritual plot point" right out of give-a-damn territory. Which is an awful shame, because I really enjoyed their chemistry for a while. I found Basil a far more engaging protagonist than Theron, though, and then Basil wandered offscreen to accomplish things without any visible effort leaving Theron the only one with a half-decent attempt at a real arc. Sigh. Uh, also, this book sure did have a lot of dudes in it. The second half of the book does at last yield up some Women Who Actually Affect Anything That Happens, but it takes its sweet time getting there, and populates its minor cast almost entirely by men. All the significant relationships (except Theron and his sister, and that's only introduced in the book's last...eighth or so), platonic and romantic, are between men; the University's only got men in it; the minor female characters are either relatives of Theron or paraded before Theron as potential wives. ??? It was distracting! Eeeeespecially in a society that seemed to have obligingly accepted all varieties of sexual orientation quite some time ago...it felt almost like an ornamental patriarchy. The book was more or less brushing women off to the side so it could embrace its hypermasculine hunter/hunted ritual motifs, and magic explicitly born of a bond between men. It felt less like feminism fail and more like fetish indulgence in the end, which is...fair enough, I suppose. xD They just could have done with a little more tightening up on the worldbuilding end so it didn't feel like the whole setting was in the service of "dude, that's hot."
—E. Kimble
Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman have created a very interesting and vivid world in this book. For the first half, I was entranced with the characters and conflicts and I enjoyed seeing the history of the unnamed city and its people fleshed out. But then it started to drag. The plot starts out making big claims about magic, history and fate, and then it fizzles out into a much smaller story about a spoiled boy and academic infighting. The madness and the blood are real, but the stakes are ultimately disappointing. One of the most pivotal characters doesn't even appear until the last hundred pages, and her role winding up the plot serves mainly to take away the agency of the central character.I picked up this book because I loved Swordspoint and The Privilege of the Sword, and after those books this was a disappointment. Where they were taut and fast-paced, this sprawled and dawdled through endless scenes of sex-magic and debauchery. I give it three stars for its atmospheric world building, for embarking on a plot that had tremendous promise, and for some very well done sex scenes. Sadly it did not live up to its initial promise.
—Emily
