Helpful Score: 1
I really try to make an effort to read related titles in order, but I accidentally read The Fall of The Kings, which was billed as a sequel to Swordspoint, first. It was good enough that I went out of my way to get ahold of Swordspoint - and now I've read it!
However, I wouldn't really call one a "sequel" to the other. The books take place in the same city, 60 years apart, and don't include any of the same main characters. Both are fully stand-alone works.
The setting is a city which strikes me as a mix of 15th or 16th century Italy and London, a complex, vibrant, decadent place which has recently moved from monarchy to bureaucracy, but still filled with wealthy nobles - who avoid the dangerous underworld of the Riverside neighborhood like the plague.
However, the nobles are certainly not above hiring the swordsmen of Riverside to fight their duels for them - and our protagonist, Richard St. Vier, is the best of these swordsmen. In this position, he is poised to be swept into a dizzying melange of intrigue, fueled by both sex and politics. The swordsman prides himself on maintaining a professional distance and only accepting those deadly commissions that he chooses - but when St. Vier's handsome, mysterious, but self-destructive lover, Alec, is kidnapped by a lord as blackmail in order to force St. Vier to commit an assassination, events cascade to a head, slipping past the accepted boundaries....
Kushner creates a rich tapestry in this work, sometimes complicating to the point of confusion, as the reader keeps track of who's plotting against who... The love she has for her characters is obvious (even if none of them are terribly likable individuals...), and each is vividly detailed.
Overall, I would say this book is better than The Fall of the Kings. Quite excellent, as a matter of fact!
However, I wouldn't really call one a "sequel" to the other. The books take place in the same city, 60 years apart, and don't include any of the same main characters. Both are fully stand-alone works.
The setting is a city which strikes me as a mix of 15th or 16th century Italy and London, a complex, vibrant, decadent place which has recently moved from monarchy to bureaucracy, but still filled with wealthy nobles - who avoid the dangerous underworld of the Riverside neighborhood like the plague.
However, the nobles are certainly not above hiring the swordsmen of Riverside to fight their duels for them - and our protagonist, Richard St. Vier, is the best of these swordsmen. In this position, he is poised to be swept into a dizzying melange of intrigue, fueled by both sex and politics. The swordsman prides himself on maintaining a professional distance and only accepting those deadly commissions that he chooses - but when St. Vier's handsome, mysterious, but self-destructive lover, Alec, is kidnapped by a lord as blackmail in order to force St. Vier to commit an assassination, events cascade to a head, slipping past the accepted boundaries....
Kushner creates a rich tapestry in this work, sometimes complicating to the point of confusion, as the reader keeps track of who's plotting against who... The love she has for her characters is obvious (even if none of them are terribly likable individuals...), and each is vividly detailed.
Overall, I would say this book is better than The Fall of the Kings. Quite excellent, as a matter of fact!
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