Swordspoint

[truepenny]

Some while back, in a discussion on papersky's journal, I said that I couldn't read The Fall of the Kings by Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman because I loved Swordspoint (its prequel, by Ellen Kushner alone) so much. I first read Swordspoint when I was about fifteen, and I got very heavily invested in the narrative and the characters, for a number of reasons which I'll get into further down.

Then, at Boskone, Papersky mentioned this to Ellen Kushner, and there was apparently some good conversation stemming off it. So, at WisCon, when I was getting Ellen to sign Swordspoint--after we'd gotten the usual tangle about no-I-am-not-Elise's-sister straightened out--I said, I'm the friend of Papersky who can't read The Fall of the Kings.

Much to my alarm, Ellen lit up like a thousand-candle chandelier and demanded that I stick around and tell her why. And I tried, but I was on the spot, and trying to think about too many things at once, and suffering second-day-of-WisCon brain, and in fangirl mode instead of litcrit mode, and frankly I think I muffed it.

Karmic debt--I had set as my goal not making a fool out of myself in front of Ursula K. Le Guin, and I hadn't made a fool out of myself in front of Ursula K. Le Guin, but clearly I had a backlog of mortification to work off. That's fine, and the mortification, I should make clear, was only me thinking, I could be saying this better. Why are these stupid words coming out of my mouth? Ellen was perfectly sympathetic and supportive of my very badly expressed reasons.

So I'm going to give it another shot.


Firstly, like I said, I read it when I was fifteen, and it exploded on my personal landscape like a particularly impressive display of fireworks. The other book that did that was Psion (Joan D. Vinge) a few years earlier, and I think for some of the same reasons. Psion was the book that introduced me to the concept of the anti-hero, which has been incredibly important in my development as a writer. Swordspoint goes farther and is more subtle with the same concept, so that Richard, Michael, and Alec are all anti-heroes to one degree or another, and the way in which they try to figure out what the right thing to do is, and how to do it, is fascinating and compelling and, I find, almost heartbreaking--especially Richard and Alec. I never do feel much sympathy for Michael.

Swordspoint is also the first book I can remember reading where I understood consciously that the characters were gay or bisexual. I'm a straight woman; I have no idea why this is so important to me--but I suppose if I could explain that, I could explain why straight women write slash. But I think that's why the love story between Richard and Alec is/was so important to me, and why I seem to be resistant to the idea that Alec could ever love anyone after Richard. I know perfectly well that their love isn't going to be eternal; they both know that, too. But while Swordspoint was the only book about them--the only book that explored their story--their love was eternal, frozen in the moment where Richard walks in and Alec says, 'Hello. I've brought us some fish.'

I'm starting to not make sense about it again. Let me move on to some of the other reasons Swordspoint is enshrined in my heart.

One is the writing. I'm not always striving to write like Ellen Kushner in my own work, but she is definitely one of the people, along with Kelly Link and Gene Wolfe, who sets the bar for me. Her language is jeweled--which is a terrible adjective, but it's the only one I can think of at the moment that gets anywhere near what I mean. Another reason is the nature of the world she creates; it's a fantasy--can be nothing but--but there is no magic, there are no dragons, no elves, no talking horses. Also, no kings. And it's Renaissance-y rather than cod medieval, and I think that was the first time I'd seen that done, either.

The way she writes her characters, too: they don't like to talk about themselves, and we learn very little about their pasts, but we nevertheless enter deeply into their emotional lives--while still never fully understanding them. I don't know quite how she does it, but it's superb.

Another way to put this, I suppose, is that Swordspoint felt and feels to me like a thing complete in itself. It didn't need a sequel (and, yes, I know The Fall of the Kings is about completely different people and many years later). I guess I'm resisting the ends being picked loose again.

Perfection is so fragile. I think that's the key here. To me, for all these reasons, Swordspoint is very close to being a perfect book, right up there with The Last Unicorn, which (as I said to matociquala not very long ago) is so perfect it frightens me. I'm afraid that reading The Fall of the Kings will somehow damage Swordspoint. Which is silly, and I know that, but that's what it is. That's the sticking point.

And now I find I'm glad I couldn't get that articulated face-to-face. Because that could come across sounding really scary and freakish and embarrassing for all parties. I feel like I should add here that I actually don't care for Thomas the Rhymer particularly and have enjoyed but not been deeply impressed by her other work that I've read. It's just this novel.

And the effects of reading paradigm-shifting books at the age of fifteen.

Comments

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

The Kushner work besides Swordspoint that deeply affects me is "The Unicorn Masque." Not all the Lazarus stories, although I think they're interesting; but that one.

And you've hit on some of the reasons Swordspoint was special to me.

[pdcawley.livejournal.com]

Thomas the Rhymer knocks me out every time. I ended up buying several copies, one for reading and a few for lending/releasing. It reads aloud fantastically as well.

[heresluck]

This makes so much sense to me -- not the details, of course, but the general issues. It's an experience I've had occasionally with books, but fairly frequently with music -- resisting buying or listening to a CD because I'm afraid it won't measure up to the artist's previous work, or because I listened to it once and it didn't immediately grab me the way I thought I needed it to.

[oracne.livejournal.com]

Ellen lit up like a thousand-candle chandelier...

What an apt description of her!

The way she writes her characters, too: they don't like to talk about themselves, and we learn very little about their pasts, but we nevertheless enter deeply into their emotional lives--while still never fully understanding them. I don't know quite how she does it, but it's superb.

Yes.

PSION.

Now there's some nummy angst. Though I read it after CATSPAW, which was kind of odd.

[diony.livejournal.com]

I read Swordspoint around age 15 also, and it had the same sort of impact on me. I still haven't finished The Fall of the Kings, but I was only able to start it at all by deciding that the Alec talked about in that book was not *my* Alec. Because clearly he wasn't, he couldn't be, since I'm not 15 now.