Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner

Swordspoint, published in 1986, bills itself as a "melodrama of manners." According to a little internet research, it's a foremost work in the mannerpunk subgenre. Mannerpunk hails back to the regency era, and focuses on social niceties in a fantasy world.

Think The Importance of Being Earnest, but there could be dragons and wizards.

Swordspoint is set in the fictional town of Riverside. The city used to be a monarchy, but now a council of nobles preside. The river bisects the town. The upper crust is on one side, the commoners on the other.

A major factor in the politics of the city is the duelists. Mercenary fencers take commissions from nobility. Sometimes, these are for general non-lethal performances. Weddings, parties, the like. Other jobs are law sanctioned contracted hits. The nobility use the duelists to fight a highly codified proxy war among themselves.

I enjoyed the relationship at the center of the story. Richard is a duelist in high demand, and Alec is a scholar from a noble past. They're are interesting characters with a lot of life. You can tell that Ellen Kushner worked hard to develop their romance in a real, relatable way.

The book's title comes from the following epigram: "Every man lives at swordspoint." This means that every one has something in their life that makes them susceptible. It's a great foreshadowing. One particularly odious nobleman tries to use Alec as leverage over Richard. The swordsman complies, and then wreaks a particularly nasty revenge.

While there was a great deal to enjoy in the story, I did find it a rather mixed bag.

Pacing was a bit of an issue. I had a hard time paying attention to the parties and the social fetes of the upper class. While they expanded the world of Riverside, it wasn't easy to like any of the members of nobility. They were rather flat -- as if they were scenery pieces rather than real people. I would have enjoyed it more if there weren't such a wide array of parties and fetes. Less superfluous exploration of the higher class would have tightened up the story.

I listened to this as an audio book. The author narrated it, with help from various actors. There were also sound effects and musical clips. It won an Audie Award in 2013, so I had high hopes for the quality of the production.

Unfortunately, I found it fell short. The sound effects and music were more-or-less random in execution. Only some of the characters had different voice actors. Also, some of the lines awkwardly shift from the narrator to the actors mid-break.

I would have enjoyed the book more without the "enhancements." If they created a full audio-drama, that'd be wonderful. It's one of my favorite mediums. But this amalgam of book and audio drama didn't work. It was an exercise in exasperation.

Ellen Kushner did a fine job narrating the story. If the production had maintained that, it would have been a far more entertaining work. The extra fluff only made it harder to listen to.

Final word, Swordspoint is a very serviceable work that could have been even better.