Book rec – The Privilege of the Sword

In a fit of depression over the end of HP I went to Barnes & Noble with my parents, and Dad, feeling bad for me, bought me two books.  Haven’t started the Roberson book, because the cover and concept of The Privilege of the Sword intrigued me too much.  I knew Ellen Kushner had written a novel called Swordspoint years ago, and vaguely suspected they might be connected, but to be quite honest I couldn’t find Swordspoint and thought, meh, doesn’t matter, I can’t quite tell if they’re connected anyway… and bought it.

Frankly, I’m GLAD I read them out of order, because TPotS takes place 20 or so years after SP and it’s just spoilery enough.  But anyway.

OH MY GOD YOU PEOPLE!

Any slash-writers on my flist should immediately go out and read this book.  For that matter, fem-slashers will also enjoy it.  And fans of Remus/Sirius should DEFINITELY like it, because quite frankly my two favourite characters (Tremontaine and St Veir) resonate with me strongly as Sirius and Remus, respectively.  *grin*  (And as you all know, my puppy-muses wake up in August every year, probably because of the sorely missed …so if you see me churning out AU Remus/Sirius set in a world were the Potters lived…well, you’ll know Ellen Kushner is also partially to blame)

Those of you who are interested in swords and swordplay will also love this book.  People who like Dumas and Steven Brust and late-medieval/early-Renaissance politics will also love this book.  In fact the only people I’m certain wouldn’t love this book are my parents, particularly my father, who never understood the desperate true love of Fitz/Fool in the FarSeer books, either. *grin*

Anyway.  I can’t tell you anything about Swordspoint yet, because I haven’t yet scraped up enough quarters to rush out and buy it (YES of COURSE I’m going to BUY it, because MY GOD I MUST FANFIC THESE BOOKS) and I wasn’t in town today anyway.  But my plans are concrete: on my lunch hour tomorrow I’m going to tramp over to New Concept Books and see if I can find a copy.  Then I’m going to get myself a copy of The Fall of Kings, co-written by Kushner and Delia Sherman (whom I also love), which is a sequel to TPotS.  Then I’m going to try to hunt up all the related short stories, because I have printed a bibliography from her webpage.

Can you all tell I’m thrilled to have found something new to throw myself into obsessively?  Mmmmmm.  (And to all my HP fandom friends, no, I’m not jumping ship or abandoning HP in any way, I just am relieved to have my post-DH grieving distracted by new books.)

(PS. ashkitty, don’t think this means I’m neglecting my planned rereading of the FarSeer/Tawny Man books, mmm)

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