A review by lucie_marieg
The Privilege of the Sword by Ellen Kushner

4.0

I found THE PRIVILEGE OF THE SWORD while researching feminist fantasy, an ill-defined sub-genre often confused with "a female main character". Ellen Kushner received the Japanese Sense of Gender award for SWORDPOINT, a recognition given every year to a sci-fi or fantasy novel that explores gender. This novel picks up 15 years after SWORDPOINT and although it is the second in a trilogy, Wikipedia promised me it worked as a stand-alone, and Wikipedia was right. It mostly focuses on Katherine, a noble teenager from a down-on-their-luck family called to the capital Riverside by her uncle Alec, the Mad Duke Tremontaine. I am not sure how her story qualifies as fantasy -- it felt more like a slightly alternative 18th century, aside from a couple of references to fallen kings who took magic with them. The gender exploration though is obvious from the moment Alec decides to dress Katherine in boy's clothes as she trains to becomes his sword - out of corsets and dresses, she doesn't have to perform feminity anymore. Multiple characters are bisexual - there is a direct link between Alec being nicknamed "Mad" and his queerness, never more obvious than in a quiet discussion he has with a man he loves but seemingly can't live with. Katherine also explores the spectrum of her sexuality via two secondary characters, a famous actress who acts in her favourite story and one of her uncle's staff members. Even without having read the two prequels, PRIVILEGE doesn't need the kind of exposition many fantasy plots do because it relies on the reader's understanding of class and women's subjugation. I really enjoyed it once I stopped expecting it to match what I usually find in fantasy novels.