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)

More, please

What did you love best about The Privilege of the Sword?

I love how Kushner never lets her readers get complacent. She writes such whole, satisfying characters in part because they never quite behave like characters in a book, more like real, and unpredictable, people. Lovely, and so finely wrought. I could be content to read nothing else.

Disappointing

There were definitely things I enjoyed about this book, but there were also many, many things I found infuriating, and even though they were meant to be awful and infuriating, I just couldn't get over them enough to enjoy it much.

Narrated by Betty White and Peter O'Toole

Would you listen to The Privilege of the Sword again? Why?

Enjoyed listening to this nicely character driven story; however, the ensemble performance left something to be desired. I felt that the changing voices (based on perspective) distracted from the story. The voice of Katherine by Ellen Kushner sounds exactly like Betty White, who I then visualized as Katherine every time! And then there was the over the top Mad Duke/Peter O'Toole voice that I just wanted to strangle the narrator (no offense). Overall, though, a good story despite the narration at points.

this was so much better than the first one!

I prefer ya fiction so that's probably why I related more to a younger main character but it seemed like it had more action and excitement than the first one .

Wonderful

Simply wonderful, a story told with the care and time taken that makes you feel the characters growing up as the plot unfolds, and I know I will be listening to this again just to hear the beautiful voices and outstanding performances of the readers.

Immersive and Wholly Engaging

After I exhausted Neil Gaiman's self narrated works for the second time, I was thrilled to learn that he has produced some of his favorite books. The performance is rich and textural, and even better then "Swordspoint" (I'm a huge fan of Barbara Rosenblat). I felt and still feel that Swordspoint didn't come quite together until very near the end of the novel, and was never sure of my opinion of Alec. "Privilege of the Sword" is the sequel that improves and improves upon the original novel in delightful and entirely unexpected ways. Don't miss out, everything is revealed.

Bad Choice for performers

What would have made The Privilege of the Sword better?

Choosing a different narrator

Has The Privilege of the Sword turned you off from other books in this genre?

Audio Performance

What didn’t you like about the narrators’s performance?

They had what sounded like a 50 year old woman voice the narrator who was in her teens. Did not match well.

Jane Austen with swords

blaaaaaaaand writing. slow, cliche. Obnoxious characters. Sex/Romance novel in disguise. reads like BAD fan fiction.

No Jane Austen

Whoever called this "Jane Austen with swords" has evidently never read any Jane Austen.

I was halfway through the book before I found a storyline I cared to follow to the end. I'm giving the book as much of a chance as I can but I highly doubt it's one I'll want to re-read.

Austen is known for her wit and manners and sly social commentary.

There is nothing sly about this book; in fact, there is rather too much blatantly indecent. If your story doesn't grip the attention without sex, then it's a lousy story.

Very Slow Developing - Couldn't finish.

Would you try another book from Ellen Kushner and/or the narrators?

I doubt it for the author but I probably would for the narrator.

What could Ellen Kushner have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?

It was extremely slow paced in development. I might have given up for the exciting parts started. Seemed like the same old thing all the time.

What aspect of the narrators’s performance would you have changed?

No changes

If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from The Privilege of the Sword?

About 50 percent of the first third. I didn't/couldn't finish the book so I do not know which elements were critical for the overall story. I might have shortened a few with only the critical parts left.