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Now, don't get me wrong (or do, I'm often wrong, but never admit that), I liked this book. An epic conclusion to the Riverside trilogy, beautifully written, flowing language and no hint of a purple prose, original plot, interesting characters, strong female leads, further exploration of the Riverside world and all that. But. Me dissapoint. Sad trombone. As several reviewers have noticed, this book suffers from A Wizard Dit It trope. I liked Riverside precisely because there was no freakin magic...
I found this novel to have a rather dreamlike quality, where myth and reality rub up against one another in an unsettling way. But it also deals with intellectual concerns such as whether one should restrict oneself to studying the works of other scholars or dig into the archives and documents in order to come to one's own conclusions through original research. I would hope that most of us would prefer the latter. Having spent some of my working life on archival projects may have prejudiced me i...
More like 2.5 stars. The first two books don't really fit neatly into my idea of fantasy. But this one dives right in to old rituals. Frankly, I found it often confusing, with relatives coming out of the woodwork and far too many student characters. I think a person who wants to know what the fuss is about with Swordspoint could read just that one and then The Privilege of the Sword and leave this one be.
Despite the claims of the jacket blurb, The Fall of the Kings is not "set in the same world of labyrinthine intrigue [as [book:Swordspoint]], where sharp swords and even sharper wits rule"--for one thing, swords hardly figure at all in The Fall of the Kings, and sharp wits end up not counting for much. Swordspoint was a "melodrama of manners"; The Fall of the Kings is an exploration of the meaning of history, culture, tradition, relationships, academia and metaphysics. Swordspoint was ultimately...
In summary: why wasn't this book as good as its forebears? A Wizard did it.Oh, man, I was so disappointed by this book. I wanted to like it, but in the end I just didn't, mainly because I felt a bit like the author betrayed me. We return to the world of Riverside around 40 years after "The Privilege of the Sword" (my favorite of the lot, as it was the least angsty and most fun). So all the characters I liked are either old or dead. But I soldiered on and initially it seemed like a good time was
After finishing Swordspoint, I was immediately on the lookout for more novels by Kushner. I figured that The Fall of the Kings, while not using the same characters as the previous novel, would still be a fun read. Well, I'm surmising that as a book written by two authors the novel's fault lies primarily with Delia Sherman for the drop in quality. Or Kushner lost whatever way with words she had in the past more-than-ten year span from Swordspoint. At any rate, I have compiled a list of the obnoxi...
I first learned of Kushner's work through her radio show "Sound and Spirit," on WBGH. Grounded in the songs and stories of cultures throughout the world, this show does an excellent job of exploring spiritual and religious traditions and themes that transcend divides of politics and dogma. This understanding of how ancient stories and archetypes echo through the ages blossoms forth in The Fall of The Kings. The Fall of the Kings is one of the Swordspoint books, which take place in an unspecified...
Despite the two stars, and despite all the complaints I'm going to make below, I never seriously thought about not finishing The Fall of the Kings. Its best achievement: setting up its plot, making clear what kinds of things are at stake (to a degree; see below) and establishing that the current story has deep connections to the myth and history that the characters retell and uncover, without making any specific ending seem inevitable early on.That was well done, really -- in other stories I've
The Fall of the Kings is set in the same world as Swordspoint and The Privilege of the Sword. However, it's a very different kind of story. The really personal focus, the sense that this story matters most to the people involved in it, is gone, and now there's a more far-reaching plot about scholarship, politics, monarchy, magic and restoration. This time there's a co-author: Ellen Kushner's wife, Delia Sherman.Having read Swordspoint and The Privilege of the Sword, I didn't know exactly how I f...
Reread this, and I am even more convinced that this is part one of a larger novel. It is engaging, witty and vivid and sensory and rich, with hints of magic; it also has an enormous cast. Toward the end, rather than pulling them all together, the cast members seem to be dropped or scattered, coming to an abrupt end. The central figure, the shadowy Lord Arlen, has yet to reveal motivation or intention, and his pole star, the beautiful Theron Campion, is out for the nonce.Would love to see Part Tw...
"...We know, up in the North, we've always known; about the Sacred Grove and the Deer Hunt and the Royal Sacrifice.""The Royal Sacrifice, or the King's Night Out," drawled Fremont into the silence. "It sounds like a bad play." [p. 147]Set forty years after The Privilege of the Sword , and about sixty after Swordspoint , this is the story of Theron Campion, posthumous son of the Mad Duke (his parentage is revealed in the short story 'The Death of the Duke), and his love affair with scholar
This was a frustrating one! I love little more than academia in a fantasy setting, and a climactic sequence begun by a scholarly debate is sooo up my street--but what dreadful pacing it turned out to have. This book takes a pleasant road but a slow one towards its destination, and when you finally reach the book's pivotal moment it's so rushed that it's robbed of all its power. The relationship between the two leads gets so much focus, only to have its purpose shoved from "character development"...
Ah, this was good. So good. Scholars, history, mystery, magic, sword fights, treason (view spoiler)[ and sex. Lots and lots of sex. My gosh. (hide spoiler)]I mean nothing really happened for the majority of the book - it was all academic intrigue and side character plotting (view spoiler)[ and tons of sex (hide spoiler)]. And the main romance had a whole 'fate' contrived feel. Which just got awkward... especially in the bedroom...But I really quite enjoyed it. I had no idea how it was going to...
It isn't every day I decide to make a visit to the Thesaurus, but in honor of my feelings for The Fall of The Kings, today I have. Come with me, as we discover the various synonyms for the word "trash", which is the adjective that best describes this book:Garbage. Junk. Rubbish. Dross. Filth. Scum.Take your pick, any of them will do perfectly. Now, I'll try and sum up as best I can why is it that this tragic disaster of a book is so horrendous, when the book before it was so good.First of all, o...
Lots of reviews seem not to have liked the ending. But I thought it was a good place to leave things.More proper review when I'm less desperately hungover.*Awake and Alive Edits 26.03.2012*I think part of why people find the ending unsatisfying, (and I think it is unsatisfying, I just likes it that way, literary masochism, whey) is that Riverside is a very fully realized setting, and Kushner and Sherman want to leave it so. Things don't end tidily, some people wander off to do other things. It's...
Surprisingly, the reviewers here seem to prefer Swordspoint to this sequel. I liked Swordspoint, but admired this complex, intricately plotted sequel even more. The novels avoid a neat ending, preferring to wraps some things up while leaving others in flux; just like life, in other words.As it turns out, this is book #3 of the series, yet I've somehow managed to skip over book #2. And yet, despite that, I enjoyed book #3 more than I did #2!
I'm puzzled by this book. I like Kushner's other work so much and this one has some of the same flowing language and nice touches of the atmosphere of her other books, but the plot is soooooo drearily slow and the protagonist so undeserving because of his apathy in the central part of the book that I just could not enjoy it. Plus the confused and strongly hinted at presence of magic seems so totally unnecessary in the world of Riverside.
4.5 - so close!
It wasn't until I reached the end of this-a shore I would never have landed on, had my love for the other Riverside stories not set such wind in my sails-that I learned this was originally published as a novella, in Bending the Landscape: Fantasy. It was the one line I read which made perfect sense to me, having felt the whole of the book how much better the story would be had they just cut out all the pages and pages of non-events. The writing itself is florid and polished, the dialogue smooth,...
It's interesting thinking about my responses to books set in universities (mundane or mythical). They tend to irritate or bore me. Perhaps it's a result of having spent too much time knocking about in such institutions myself; although as a mediocre biology student and, later, a hard-working health sciences student very little of my time has been spent in pubs or lecturer's private parties crapping on about the real truth of X or Y. Sadly, The Fall of the Kings has this in plenty, and failed to