![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccastareyesThe nice thing about Christmas is new books and time to read them. The Fall of Kings is a book set in Ellen Kishner's Riverside series. Thankfully it was set decades after Swordspoint, the first book, because I only vaguely remembered the events of that one. (I remembered I liked it, and I found out that my used copy doesn't have the short stories that the reprint has... perhaps I should fix this.)
I remember hearing about Swordspoint on a podcast (the SF Squeecast, I think), that noted that for a book published in 1987, it did two interesting things. The first was that it had no magic or non-humans: if it wasn't for the extensive worldbuilding, it could have been set in a fictional country in our world. The second was that the two lead characters were both men and lovers in a society that seemed to be perfectly open to the idea that people might take same-sex lovers, and the only scandal came when they were gossip-worthy lovers or they didn't work things out with spouses (if any). Since it was partially set among the upper-classes, people gossiped, but... well, 'who is sleeping with who' is a subject that has interested humans for as long as we've had language, probably. (I think Mercedes Lackey's Magic's whatever trilogy came out around the same time, if we're counting
'Fantasy Books with Queer Protagonists', but it seems like Alec and Richard ended up a lot better than Vanyel.)
The Fall of Kings continued the setting, but was concerned with the intersection of politics and scholarship. One of the main characters, Basil St. Cloud, is a scholar of ancient history at the university and is the running for a chaired professorship -- aka status and money. But, more than that, Basil is leading (at least in his field, he's got buddies in Astronomy and Mathematics) a movement of young scholars to rely more on observations and primary sources rather than a handful of 'canonical' books. Which already catches my interest, since I am all about the academic plots.
Normally, this would stay at the university, but Basil's interest is in the old kings and their mysterious advisors/lovers, who claimed to be wizards -- mostly wondering if some of the earlier kings of the north weren't the power-mad delusional tyrants that their better documented descendants were. Which is out of fashion in an oligarchic capital city lead by nobles who had overthrown the last king centuries ago... and at a time when political factions of the north are wondering if maybe the old legends about the king and land were true and a return of the monarchy would make the weather suck less.
So, lots of nummy politics and academics and such. I was less interested in the mystical aspects of the book: as part of his Basil's research he finds a spellbook that escaped the burnings when the monarchy ended, and gets sucked in... and it doesn't help that Basil's lover is the direct descendent of the last king's sister (and the man who beheaded the last king, which must have made dinner conversations awkward). It made the ending suitably climatic, and the magic was suitably... well, weird and unconstrained and wild... but as I mentioned, this isn't a particularly magic setting. So, not sure what to think there.
But I did like it, and want to reread Swordspoint now. After I finish the rest of my Christmas books.
I remember hearing about Swordspoint on a podcast (the SF Squeecast, I think), that noted that for a book published in 1987, it did two interesting things. The first was that it had no magic or non-humans: if it wasn't for the extensive worldbuilding, it could have been set in a fictional country in our world. The second was that the two lead characters were both men and lovers in a society that seemed to be perfectly open to the idea that people might take same-sex lovers, and the only scandal came when they were gossip-worthy lovers or they didn't work things out with spouses (if any). Since it was partially set among the upper-classes, people gossiped, but... well, 'who is sleeping with who' is a subject that has interested humans for as long as we've had language, probably. (I think Mercedes Lackey's Magic's whatever trilogy came out around the same time, if we're counting
'Fantasy Books with Queer Protagonists', but it seems like Alec and Richard ended up a lot better than Vanyel.)
The Fall of Kings continued the setting, but was concerned with the intersection of politics and scholarship. One of the main characters, Basil St. Cloud, is a scholar of ancient history at the university and is the running for a chaired professorship -- aka status and money. But, more than that, Basil is leading (at least in his field, he's got buddies in Astronomy and Mathematics) a movement of young scholars to rely more on observations and primary sources rather than a handful of 'canonical' books. Which already catches my interest, since I am all about the academic plots.
Normally, this would stay at the university, but Basil's interest is in the old kings and their mysterious advisors/lovers, who claimed to be wizards -- mostly wondering if some of the earlier kings of the north weren't the power-mad delusional tyrants that their better documented descendants were. Which is out of fashion in an oligarchic capital city lead by nobles who had overthrown the last king centuries ago... and at a time when political factions of the north are wondering if maybe the old legends about the king and land were true and a return of the monarchy would make the weather suck less.
So, lots of nummy politics and academics and such. I was less interested in the mystical aspects of the book: as part of his Basil's research he finds a spellbook that escaped the burnings when the monarchy ended, and gets sucked in... and it doesn't help that Basil's lover is the direct descendent of the last king's sister (and the man who beheaded the last king, which must have made dinner conversations awkward). It made the ending suitably climatic, and the magic was suitably... well, weird and unconstrained and wild... but as I mentioned, this isn't a particularly magic setting. So, not sure what to think there.
But I did like it, and want to reread Swordspoint now. After I finish the rest of my Christmas books.
