Rating: 
Summary: A Lesson in Elegance
Review: When I first started reading this work, I was a little apprehensive and not at all sure what I was getting into. By the end, I was thoroughly entranced. The dialogue flows like nothing I've read before, and the characters are alluring through their faults as well as strengths. The entire book contains an elegance which draws the reader in and refuses to let go. I've never read anything like it.
Rating: 
Summary: A tale of swords, sex, and schemes
Review: _Swordspoint_ is the sort of fantasy that isn't really "fantasy" at all (no wizards, no dragons), but more of an "alternate history" where a realistic story is set in a world that might have been. It is set in "The City", a sort-of London located in an England slightly different from the one in the history we know. The two major changes are these: First, the monarchy has been abolished and replaced with an elected body. Second, society is more sexually open and tolerant, and there is no stigma attached to being gay or bisexual. Our hero, or should I say our anti-hero, is Richard St Vier, swordsman for hire. He makes his living by fighting duels for nobles who aren't skilled enough to fight their own. He lives in Riverside, the lower-class ghetto, with his lover Alec, an educated and sarcastic young man who at times betrays hints of noble birth. Richard gets embroiled in the plots of the nobility, all of them scheming with and against each other, and suddenly he and Alec are both in danger as they end up over their heads in intrigue. I was about to dismiss _Swordspoint_ as fluff until about two-thirds of the way in. While it was entertaining, it seemed to be just a soap opera about the schemes and love affairs of a group of shallow, unlikable people. But as the plot thickens, the best surprises in the novel are in store for us. We find out just how far Richard will go to save Alec, and vice versa. Somehow, the amoral assassin and the secretive cynic turn out to be truly in love, and when I found that out, it made both of them twice as sympathetic as they had been before--and I found myself rooting for them. Is their love strong enough to withstand the machinations of the nobles? Read on and see, and then at the end you will be rewarded with perhaps the best final paragraph I've read in years--about the messiness of life as contrasted with the tidy endings of fiction. A fun, swashbuckling read for a lazy weekend--it isn't "deep" or very long, but it is entertaining.
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