#ellen kushner

[queer-book-character-tournament]

Character, book, and author names under the cut

Shen Qiao- 千秋/Qian Qiu/Thousand Autumn by Meng Xi Shi

Elliot Schafer- In Other Lands by Sarah Rees Brennan

Alec Campion- Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner

Tennalhin (Tennal) Halkana- Ocean's Echo by Everina Maxwell

#Shen Qiao #千秋 #Qian Qiu #Thousand Autumn #Meng Xi Shi #Elliot Schafer #In Other Lands #iol #Sarah Rees Brennan #Alec Campion #Swordspoint #Ellen Kushner #Tennalhin (Tennal) Halkana #Tennal Halkana #Ocean's Echo #Winter's orbit #Everina Maxwell #lgbt books #polls #queer book character tournament 2.0

[sailormoonsub]

please tell me that someone else has read Swordspoint and/or Privilege of the Sword by Ellen Kushner. given the high proportion of sword lesbians and people who are so normal about messy relationships in my audience, it seems possible

#im reading all her books and they're making me insaneeeee #i will do a full book wrap up here if you're interested #i read over a hundred books in 2023 since i work at a library now #also if you don't hear from me until the new year it's because I'm on my International World Tour (aka visiting family for xmas) #swordspoint #privilege of the sword #ellen kushner

[thelastofthebookworms]

Feel free to make suggestions. I may make another poll if there are enough candidates.

More polls.

#polls #sapphic reads #queer reads #lgbt reads #sapphic leads #teixcalaan #a memory called empire #a desolation called peace #arkady martine #the stars are legion #kameron hurley #this is how you lose the time war #amal el mohtar #max gladstone #the priory of the orange tree #samantha shannon #ninefox gambit #yoon ha lee #the privilege of the sword #ellen kushner #down among the sticks and bones #wayward children #seanan mcguire #the long way to a small angry planet #the wayfarers #becky chambers #gideon the ninth #harrow the ninth #the locked tomb #tamsyn muir

[nothwell]

Did you enjoy Jane Austen or Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell but wished for more murderhusbands?

Do you think any book could be improved with swords?

Do you prefer your characters queer until proven otherwise?

Some have called Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner a "cult classic," which is a fun way to say a book is criminally underappreciated. It's a perfect blend of fantasy, intrigue, romance, and edge-of-your-seat action. This forerunner of the mannerpunk (or fantasy-of-manners) subgenre is a marvelous balance of Austenesque social ritual with bloody consequences. A wealth of worldbuilding-through-implication is packed into this shockingly slender volume that leaves the reader ravenous for more.

While it contains far more grit and gore than your average romance, it is still at its core a romance, and a queer one at that - almost every twist of the ever-coiling plot is a direct result of romantic desire either thwarted or indulged. Our heroes, the low-born master swordsman Richard St. Vier and his mysterious academic lover Alec, form the core of this Gordian knot. Though I prefer a Happily-Ever-After over a Happy-For-Now, I concede that Swordspoint's conclusion puts the punk in mannerpunk and thus feels wholly appropriate for this one-of-a-kind story.

tl;dr - read Swordspoint and come scream with me, pls.

#queer romance #queer fantasy #mm romance #mlm romance #fantasy romance #romantasy #romantic fantasy #low fantasy #mannerpunk #fantasy of manners #swordspoint #ellen kushner

[haveyoureadthisfantasybook]

vote YES if you have finished the entire book.

vote NO if you have not finished the entire book.

(faq · submit a book)

#fantasy #books #Ellen Kushner #Swordspoint #Riverside #poll #result: no

[badass-queer-couples-battle]

Sword gays showdown, round 1 of bracket one

Propaganda:

For Richard:

Context : Swordspoint was published in 1987. Several characters are explicitely gay/bisexual, including... the main character (well, Ellen Kushner is part of the community. I met her once at a signing and I was so awkward and she and her wife (who cowrote the third volume of the series) were so nice. She's also on tumblr. What a wonderful world)

So, let's go back to Richard, who lived in the country with his mother and learnt his trade for a weird guy who eventually died. Richard is a sword prodigy (he also started quite young and trains constantly - natural talent is a thing, hard training is another)

He lives in the "poor" part of the city, where prostitutes, thieves, innkeepers and seamstresses prolifer

Richard does learn the blade and eventually goes into the city. Where he becomes a swordman for hire. Famous, respected and feared, Richard isn't exactly the chatty signing-autographs type. People with good sense leave him alone because the ones stupid enough to challenge him didn't live to tell the tale

But one day... Alec happens. Alec's a penniless ex scholar with a feud with the University, a sharp tongue and absolutely not the means to defend it in ill famed places, which is the ones he prefers since he's always looking for trouble dur to his self-destructive tendencies. The first time they met, Alec tries to get on Richaed's ndrves so the other man would kill him. However, Richard finds this man unafraid of him quite amusing. Word's eventually gegs around ghat the gwo are lovers and people din't get on Alec's bad side if they can prevent it (not easy, Alec has Issues. Capital I.) to avoid having todeal with Richard's protectiveness. I mean, I wouldn't want to anger a professional swordman either

Alec teaches Richard how to read because he never knew how to m. He's the perfect damsel in distress until he isn't because his help is needed [mod note: end of propaganda- part one . Didn't leave it as a wall of text since it'd be harder to read]

The archetypal gay (bi) swordsman: he was one of the few queer characters in fantasy fiction back in the 70s when the first book was published, yet he's in an explicitly romantic and sexual relationship with a man, and he is The terrifying swordsman, infamous, terrifying, and frequently hired for his skills. Also the plot of the book revolves around him using his sword skills to rescue his lover and getting rescued back. So. Y'know.

For Dominique:

This traumatized mess of a vampire is So. She's SO. She's bi and fights with a sword and has a dead twin and a fwb relationship with her childhood friend and a badass girlfriend and a "bonding over their mutual feelings for her childhood friend" thing going on with another guy. 

she's gay she's a vampire she has a sword and I love her 

#sword gays showdown #richard st vier #swordspoint #dominique de sade #vanitas no carte #the case study of vanitas #ellen kushner #swordspoint series

[do-you-know-this-queer-character]

Do you know this queer character?

Katherine is WLW and uses She/Her pronouns!

#couldn't find a consensus between lesbian and bi so wlw it is! #katherine talbert #the privilege of the sword #ellen kushner #tumblr polls #fandom polls #poll #wlw #she/her #books #lgbtqia #do you know this queer character #finished

[suchbluesky]

Pg 1 and 2 of a comic version of the opening of Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner that I’ve been working on for fun

If you haven’t yet had the pleasure of reading Swordspoint I highly recommend it!

#i have some more pages planned but let’s see if I get around to them #swordspoint #comic art #illustration #comics #riverside #Ellen kushner #plz hire me to do a swordspoint graphic novel #my arts and stuff

[ellenkushner]

My world today.

With tulips.

#nyc #ellen kushner #out the window #goddamn sidewalk sheds NYC #riverside drive #April 2024 storm #fox mask

[wearethekat]

Seven Covers in Seven Days: The Fall of Kings by Ellen Kushner

tagged by @e-b-reads to post the cover of a book you love and tag someone else to do the same every day for a week!

Any Thomas Canty cover is an instant draw for me, and it's especially lovely when it's the art for a swashbuckler with a queer romance and earnest discussions about historiography.

tagging @saintmercymorn! (as always, no obligation to participate if you don't feel inclined!)

#going to interpret this one as post covers I love since I haven't got hard copies of most of the books I've read #ellen kushner #the fall of kings

[fourthousandbooks]

A new book tonight, we start The Privilege of the Sword by Ellen Kushner, the sequel to Swordspoint, which was a book that I picked up for the oddest recommendation given the source material and thoroughly enjoyed and immediately bought the two following books too.

This book is about Katherine, a young woman who is suddenly brought to the city when her uncle, the Mad Duke Tremontaine, decides to have her trained as a swordswoman in exchange for erasing her family’s debts, and presumably continue to fuck with the city a lot since he’s a returning character with charisma, brains and spite. (He was probably my favorite in the previous book, but I haven’t officially been told by the book that it’s him so we shall both be coy for a bit) but I’m still too early to know all the plots spinning around and which things tie to what. I didn’t have most of the twists called till the very climax of the previous book, which is always fun.

I’m currently 80 pages in and it’s in the part of the story where it sets plot threads spinning and drops hints both about the returning characters and their current states, and establishes the new characters and their agenda, but it’s definitely a slower story than some I’ve read. I’m not complaining, I’m enjoying the slow build and time to get to know what’s going on, it’s an intrigue and swashbuckling book so the set up and the deadly dance is the point and so far I’m enjoying it a lot.

We shall see how long it takes me to read it, it would be nice if I finished it by the end of the week, but who knows! Swordspoint I read 3/4s of in less than a week and then needed a whole month to read the last chunk, so we shall see just what the future has in store.

#new reads #the privilege of the sword #ellen kushner #I like Katherine a lot too #she’s a really fun protagonist and good counterpoint to the other characters #and to the leads of the previous book #I look forward to her having more misadventures #and sticking her nose in other peoples businesses

[queer-book-character-tournament]

Character, book, and author names under the cut

Frances Janvier- Radio Silence by Alice Oseman

Jude St. Francis- A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

Nick Nelson- Heartstopper by Alice Oseman

Richard St Vier- Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner

#Frances Janvier #Radio Silence #osemanverse #Alice Oseman #Nick Nelson #Heartstopper #Jude St. Francis #A Little Life #Hanya Yanagihara #Richard St Vier #Swordspoint #Ellen Kushner #polls #lgbt books #queer book character tournament 2.0

[fengtianshi]

Fish for breakfast, yum...

Alec from "Swordspoint" by Ellen Kushner

#swordspoint #ellen kushner #alec #inktober #swordspointober

[thelastofthebookworms]

We're now playing 'big names, lesser known works' but the next polls will have better known works.

When the other polls will be out, they'll be in my 'fantasy polls' tag.

Okay, this time that's really it for the night for the fantasy polls. See you !

#polls #fantasy polls #fantasy #the night of the solstice #l.j. smith #odd and the frost giants #neil gaiman #thomas the rhymer #ellen kushner #everworld #k.a. applegate #the giraffe and the pelly and me #roald dahl #the canterville ghost #oscar wilde #mirrorworld #cornelia funke #chrestomanci #diana wynne jones #the supernaturalist #eoin colfer

[shortstorytournament]

Short Story Tournament

THE NECKLACE by Guy de Maupassant (1884) (link)

She suffered endlessly, feeling she was entitled to all the delicacies and luxuries of life. She suffered because of the poorness of her house as she looked at the dirty walls, the worn-out chairs and the ugly curtains.

THE SWORDSMAN WHOSE NAME WAS NOT DEATH by Ellen Kushner (2011) (link)

“Thank you,” the swordsman answered courteously. His mother had raised him with good manners, and some old habits cling, even in the big city. Sometimes he could almost hear her say, Just because you can kill people whenever you want to doesn’t mean you have a license to be rude to anyone.

#short story tournament #the necklace #guy de maupassant #the swordsman whose name was not death #ellen kushner #fiction #short stories #polls #round 3

[haveyoureadthisfantasybook]

vote YES if you have finished the entire book.

vote NO if you have not finished the entire book.

(faq · submit a book)

#fantasy #books #The Privilege of the Sword #Ellen Kushner #Riverside #poll #result: no