The Privilege of the Sword

By: Ellen Kushner

Narrated by: Ellen Kushner, Barbara Rosenblat, Felicia Day, Joe Hurley, Katherine Kellgren, Nick Sullivan, Neil Gaiman

Length: 15 hrs and 36 mins

Publisher's summary

Audie Award Nominee, Multi-voiced Performance, 2013

Award-winning author, narrator, and screenwriter Neil Gaiman personally selected this book, and, using the tools of the Audiobook Creation Exchange (ACX), cast the narrators and produced this work for his audiobook label, Neil Gaiman Presents.

The Privilege of the Sword tells the tale of a young girl who risks everything to go live with her eccentric, litigious - and extremely rich – uncle Alec in the colorful city Kushner has created, a city where elegant nobles can mingle with raffish actors one moment and deadly swordsmen the next. Fans of Kushner's first book, Swordspoint, will already be familiar with Alec as the angry young scholar with mysterious origins, living in the city’s Riverside district with a notorious killer swordsman. Now, in The Privilege of the Sword, some years later, Alec is the Mad Duke Tremontaine, living in a mansion on the Hill, still tortured by his past….

But you don’t need to have read Swordspoint to enjoy The Privilege of the Sword. This is the story of Katherine herself, a girl who starts out imagining her life will be a sort of Jane Austen-style romance, full of dances and dresses and parties - but finds that her iconoclastic uncle has other plans. When she gets to his house in the city, the Mad Duke dresses Lady Katherine in men's clothes, gets her a first-rate tutor in swordplay, and sets her loose on a traditional world that is not really ready for her…. Nor, at first, is she ready for it.

A few words from Neil on Privilege of the Sword: "Life hands us so many moments when we hover between who we were raised to be, who the people around us are trying to make us, and who we are trying to become. In Katherine's case, that means encountering a range of people and behaviors her mother never prepared her for - including some shocking acts of violence, both physical and emotional. As one of Kushner’s most charming characters, an actress known as 'The Black Rose', sighs, 'It's all so very difficult, until you get the hang of it.'"

In this exciting new "illuminated production", the author herself reads her own work, supported by a full cast. Author Ellen Kushner is also a popular performer and National Public Radio host (Sound & Spirit). As with her previous audiobooks, the award-winning Witches of Lublin and Swordspoint, Ellen teamed up with Sue Zizza of SueMedia Productions to illuminate certain key scenes with some truly stunning sound elements, including original music commissioned just for this book (!) by composer Nathaniel Tronerud. Ellen Kushner reads all of the first-person narration from Katherine’s own point of view. In scenes where an omniscient narrator takes over, we’ve called on the amazing talents of the award-winning actor Barbara Rosenblat, a woman who's been called "the Meryl Streep of audiodrama". The cast also features Joe Hurley (Alec Campion: the Mad Duke Tremontaine), Felicia Day (Katherine Talbert), Nick Sullivan (Lord Ferris; Arthur Ghent), Katherine Kellgren (Lady Artemesia Fitz-Levi; Teresa Grey; Flavia "the Ugly Girl"), and Neil Gaiman himself (Rogues' Ball Artist)! The artwork used here is an original painting and design by Thomas Canty created exclusively for the Neil Gaiman Presents audiobook edition of The Privilege of the Sword.

To hear more from Neil Gaiman on The Privilege of the Sword, click here, or listen to the introduction at the beginning of the book itself.

Learn more about Neil Gaiman Presents and Audiobook Creation Exchange (ACX).

©2006 Ellen Kushner (P)2012 SueMedia Productions

Critic reviews

"One of the most gorgeous books I've ever read: it's witty and wonderful, with characters that will provoke, charm, and delight." (Holly Black, coauthor of The Spiderwick Chronicles)

"Unholy fun, and wholly fun… and elegant riposte, dazzlingly executed." (Gregory Maguire, author of Wicked)

Fun coming of age story about a young lady.

What did you like best about The Privilege of the Sword? What did you like least?

An interesting story in a weird, fictional land about a society going through rapid change at the same time as the young protagonist is exploring her sexuality. The characters are all interesting, the novel is short. But there is no real complexity or depth to what is going on.

What about the narrators’s performance did you like?

The narrator's did a good job, but the fact that each read their own chapter was a little jarring. I think Felicia Day did well as the main character, but said very few lines of the main character. They were usually spoken by the narrator of that chapter. Though interesting to have different 3rd person and 2nd person narrators for their respective chapters, I found it out to then add other voice actors only occasionally.

wonderful

Ellen Kusher has written a series of books full of some of the most human characters I've ever run into in fantasy literature. I am not certain I've ever run across the mannerpunk subgenre before running across the Neil Gaiman Presents collection of audiobooks. By his endorsement alone I would have tried the series, but then I realized I'd run across one of her short stories in an anthology. After giving it a listen I was completely hooked. The world of Swordspoint is charming, addicting, and most especially, so very very viscerally human. 10/10 highly recommend every last one of them.

A Witty & Moving Fantasy about Gender and Identity

Imagine Jane Austen teaming up with Oscar Wilde to write a historical fantasy featuring class, gender, identity, sexuality, swords, and acting (and the pursuit of single-life rather than marriage), and you catch a glimpse of Ellen Kushner's "mannerpunk" novel The Privilege of the Sword (2006).

The novel is (partly) the coming of age story of Katherine Talbert, a plucky, good-natured, and innocent fifteen-year-old daughter of a country aristocrat family in financial straits. As the action begins, the wealthy and eccentric Duke Tremontaine, AKA the Mad Duke of Riverside (his residence in the bad part of town near the docks), has written to say that if his sister will send his niece Katherine to live with him in the city for six months according to his rules, he will pay all her family's debts. Katherine wants to see the big city and envisions making a stunning appearance at fashionable balls in fine new dresses. Contrary to her expectations, though, Uncle Alec has all of her dresses removed, forces her to wear the clothes of a young man, and makes her take sword lessons from a grizzled master swordsman who calls her, "Duke boy."

The Privilege of the Sword has no supernatural events or magic, no elves or wizards, and no epic wars between good and evil. It is a fantasy by virtue of its well-imagined secondary world, a pseudo Elizabethan or Jacobean place in which the nobility has expunged kings but still lives off the labor of their "tenants," in which people drink chocolate, brandy, and wine and smoke drugs, in which in addition to aristocrats there are poets, scholars, actors, merchants, pickpockets, and prostitutes, and in which the nobles wield the privilege of the sword, the right to decide their feuds by hiring professional swordsmen to duel matters out.

Among the many themes interestingly worked out by The Privilege of the Sword is the difficult but vital need for women to become independent and free to express their true selves in a male-oriented world. The gadfly Duke wants to transform his niece into a swordsman to free her from the usual fate of upper class women, who typically end up having to marry philandering and or abusive husbands. One of the refreshing things about the novel is that Katherine never attempts to hide her gender when she's dressing up in guys' clothes and sporting her sword and dagger. And Kushner writes other interesting female characters who are trying to get by in that man's world, like the Black Rose, a charismatic actress, and Teresa Grey, a "woman of quality" who secretly writes popular plays for the theater.

In addition to gender themes, Kushner expresses an open-minded view of sexuality. Katherine, for example, is attracted to both the Black Rose and to Alec's servant-ward Marcus, and another of the compelling developments in the novel is the frank and humorous awakening of her sexual self. And readers familiar with Kushner's first Riverside novel, Swordspoint (1987), will recall the romantic love between Alec and the master swordsman Richard St. Vier, which The Privilege of the Sword develops eighteen years after the events of the earlier book.

Kushner also writes interesting themes relating to identity and acting. Katherine reads a sensational romantic novel, The Swordsman Whose Name Was Not Death, watches a play based on it, and begins thinking of her own actions and those of her friend Artemisia Fitz-Levy in terms of the characters and the actors portraying them. Lucius Perry, a handsome young nobleman, plays different roles as male prostitute, heterosexual lover, faithful cousin, and noble scion. And to what degree does the Duke feign his "madness" to discomfit his peers? The line between acting and being one's true self is blurry, and not just for professional actors.

At times I tired of Katherine's superficial and hysterical aristo friend Artemisia ("The only time I pick up a book is to throw it at my maid" is her best line), and the climactic showdown between Lord Ferris and Duke Alec discomforted me, but I found the resolution of the story delightful and still continue to savor Kushner's characters.

I had a great time listening to the audiobook version of The Privilege of the Sword.
I really like Kushner's reading of the first person chapters narrated from the voice of Katherine (spunky and clear) and Barbara Rosenblat's reading of the third person narration of the other chapters (husky and androgynous), and the different audiobook "luminaries" who read the voices of the different characters in the "illuminated" sections (specially important or intense scenes). I especially enjoyed Joe Hurly's decadent drawl as the Mad Duke, sounding like Oscar Wilde bathing in a hot tub full of turquoise absinthe.

I have mixed feelings about the occasional sound effects sprinkled throughout the audiobook, door knockings, paper rustlings, owl hootings, boot clackings, sword clangings, and so on. Often these are implied or directly mentioned by the text, as when the narration mentions how Katherine’s sword "rattled and clanged," and we hear the sound effect of a sword rattling and clanging. Even moments like when the narration says someone leaves a room and we hear the sound of a door closing, which at least are not redundant, felt more intrusive than immersive. On the other hand, the music beautifully and appropriately enhances the moods of the various scenes, and is more appealing and original than the majority of movie music these days.

In conclusion, fans of Swordspoint would love The Privilege of the Sword, and anyone interested in fantasy that focuses on social customs, psychological conflicts, and witty dialogue should enjoy it.

A charming story you become entwined with.

If you could sum up The Privilege of the Sword in three words, what would they be?

Swashbuckling Romantic Intrigue.

Who was your favorite character and why?

You do fall in love with Lady Katerine as she struggles (initially) with her position and them looses herself in her new found freedoms.

Any additional comments?

As others have said, do NOT buy this based on the famous people doing some voice work, good though it may be that ONLY accounts for about 5-10% of the overall production. The rest of the work is EXTREMELY well done. Just don't buy this thinking you're going to be hearing a lot of Felicia Day and you're golden.

Fabulous follow-up!!

This story was an excellent follow up to Swordpoint. This isn't exactly a follow to the same story, it's a new story with some of the same characters. Equally awesome as the first book though. I can't say it's a better book because it isn't an extension of the same story really, it's about the "Mad Duke's" niece becoming a swordsman. (swordswoman?) Anyway, this story kept me completely engrossed. I look forward to more, and the narration and background sound were fabulous. Really puts you there.

A charming and insightful tale

This is so much more than a coming-of-age story. It is that, definitely, but interwoven alongside the tale of a young girl's discovery of her identity are beautiful and profound explorations of the nature of love, honour, beauty, friendship, happiness and gender. Ellen Kushner plays a delightful game with all of these concepts, and the listener can't help but wonder what they all really mean.

The narration is just spectacular. Barbara Rosenblat's deep, purring murmur seductively draws you into the Riverside world, and Ellen Kushner's own mocking drawl is the perfect counterpoint. At times I wished there was a little more Rosenblat and a little less Kushner, but it's kind of a privilege to know that one is hearing the characters speaking EXACTLY as the author intended them to.

I never thought listening to a young girl's first person narrative would be so enthralling. And don't let that factual description fool you - this book DEFINITELY doesn't belong in the young adult category.

Great story, wonderful performance

The mannered and bloody world of Riverside & the City is escapism at its finest, with nice dose of human insight humming along below the surface.

Building on that foundation, what really takes these stories over the top is the production. The voice acting is stellar and perfectly cast, the characters vibrant and compelling, the background audio engrossing without being distracting. It's an all around wonderful listen, and never fails to pull me into Kushner's world. I love it.

Would have preferred just Kushner as narrator

Any additional comments?

I really liked the first in this series, but nearly shut this one off because of the voice acting chosen for Alec. Is it just me, or did he sound constipated all the time? I would have preferred Kushner's version, especially since I'd gotten used to it in "Swordspoint."

Beautiful Audiobook

Excellent book. Excellent performance. If you enjoy fantasy, swordplay or intrigue give this a try.

A Delight to Hear-

I've always enjoyed reading this book, and when I heard Neil Gaiman had produced an audiobook version of it, I knew I had to hear it. I'd been intrigued by an interview I'd heard where he'd spoken to how aware he was of the audible quality of his writing for children. So I picked up from the library his audiobook for Stardust, which he himself read, and greatly enjoyed it. Hearing a book read by the author is an entirely different experience from reading one.
When I first started listening to The Privilege of the Sword, I was initially thrown off by the switching actors. Yet eventually I figured out where and why they were switching the voices, so that made sense and I just enjoyed it. I wish there had been more parts with the actor who played Duke Tremontaine! Ah- what a fabulous voice that man has, and PERFECT for the part. And there was another woman who read most of the narration when it wasn't from the first perspective of the main character, and her voice was so rich, yet stern, yet purring all at the same time... like rubbing your ear on an old velvet cushion.
Come to think of it, all of the other actors brought in for the roles had voices wonderful to hear and perfect for their roles. Great casting.
Ellen Kushner reads the story very well, even though the story is from a much younger woman's point of view. The fact that she is the author adds everything I could want to the story- I love getting to hear how the story sounds in the author's own head, where they put emphasis and inflection, how they hear the voices of the characters and such.
I did wish for a bit more consistency as to when they brought in the external actors besides the two main narrators, but I suppose there were probably some budget or time constraints there, so they only did it at the really pivotal scenes. I felt like an old throwback to the days where families would gather around radios, as I sat next to my computer, my other tasks forgotten, listening it go back and forth and back and forth between actors like I had snuck into a play backstage, with only a backdrop to hide the action from me... yet it all played out in my head so there was no lack.
Excellent story, excellent production- a delight to hear.