Swordsmanship, politics, and strong women: Sky of Swords

[dangermousie]

I have just finished a book I bought on a whim but cannot recommend highly enough: Dave Duncan's Sky of Swords.

Yes, it's a fantasy. I am not a big fantasy reader. In fact, the number of fantasy books I have enjoyed over the years probably doesn't exceed a dozen. But this certainly enters on that list. It's not an urban fantasy, but neither it is a high fantasy, with surreal creatures or dragons. In fact, it is a rather fantasified version of Tudor England and Europe of that time.

The story, set in a fictional kindgom of Chivial, follows the daughter of Chivial's able if monstrous King Ambrose, Princess Malinda. If Ambrose is rather inspired by Henry VIII, with his girth, ability, women problems, and fights with monastic orders, then Malinda (who is probably one of my favorite heroines) is rather modelled on Queen Elizabeth I. And you can do much much worse than that.

The book is written in a rather circular fashion: it opens with the trial of deposed Queen Malinda for treason by the new usurping ruler and goes back in time to retell what happened: of how Malinda came to power and how she lost it, as well. Even if the book is good even before that, the story really gets going when Malinda refuses to wed Radgar Aethelring, the pirate King of the Baels [this world's Vikings or similar] and history sort of...unravels. I don't want to spoil too much, because the plot is actually clever and some pivotal moments left me gasping with shock.

The fantasy element is present but relatively slight: instead of Catholic monasteries, there are conjurors. This world also has necromancers. Oh, and it also has King's (or Queen's) Blades: highly trained swordsmen who end up being bound to a liege lord or lady and whose abilities are enhanced.

This is a rare book which gives me both a strong, intelligent, ruthless heroine (who, nontheless, fits into a period as written: Malinda triumphs and rules through her brains and will, not because she is a fighter) and male characters that are every bit as neat as the protagonist. My favorites of the male characters were two. One was Lord Roland - a former Blade who is King Ambrose's extremely intelligent chancellor and whose antagonistic/mentor relationship with Malinda was my second favorite relationship in the book. The one time I did get suspiciously sniffly was when Malinda found him after the conjuration torture and he was not good for anything any more and Countess Kate, Lord Roland's wife, begged Malinda to have her husband killed. And Malinda refused but the Blades did it anyway, as the last service they could do him. And the other was Dog, whose real name we never knew, one of Malinda's Blades, who is borderline insane [you want a messed-up background, you got it], and oh yes, also the love of Malinda's life.

After I finished the book, I went researching and found out that the Sky of Swords is actually a third in a series of interconnected novels, none of which you need to read to enjoy this. But I am quite excited because one of those two follows Lord Roland and the other Radgar Aethelring. Yay! I am so there.

Comments

[muffinkath7.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the rec! I just ordered it from the library. Do you think I should just go ahead and read this, or do you wish you'd read the other two first? Do they run concurrently?

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

No, I didn't even realize it was part of a series until I was browsing. It's basically a stand-alone book.

[eraeos.livejournal.com]

Hmm...sounds interesting. And of course, this is always a winner: Malinda triumphs and rules through her brains and will, not because she is a fighter. Thanks for the review. ^^

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

If you do check it out, hope you like!

[timescout.livejournal.com]

I haven't read anything for ages. *hangs head in shame* I have to make a note of these to see if I cand find them here. The story sounds really interesting.

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

It was a fun read!

[http://users.livejournal.com/_kirsty/]

Could you elaborate a tiny bit on Dog/Malinda? Because I do like the Princess/Bodyguard trope. :)

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

OK (this is somewhat spoilery).

But Malinda decides to bind some Blades to her (as a protection measure during all the dynastic trouble) and one of them is Dog - who is messed up and pretty insane but a good fighter and volunteers to protect her.

So he ends up being one of her four Blades and they fall for each other and she actually ends up sleeping with him as a devirginizing thing (to prevent a marriage to some ruler who has a virgin fetish) but they end up in a secret relationship and he has a really messed up backstory and is very single-minded about protecting her and not sure how much you want me to spoil...

[http://users.livejournal.com/_kirsty/]

Thanks. That works for me. :)

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Your description of the world and its approach to fantasy is actually much more in line with most of the high and epic fantasy that I've read over the last 6-7 years than the dragons and magic magic magic approach, whih tends to be far more prominent in things like Harry Potter and Eragon than most books being published. (If you liked the "reimagined fantasy Tudor England" aspect, you might try Jim Butcher's Codex Alera series, which essentially exists because Butcher was challenged that you couldn't write an interesting fantasy series based on the Roman Empire. Also has plenty of strong female characters in a variety of roles, and several interesting pairings.)

I've seen Dave Duncan's books around, but have a hard time trusting male fantasy authors, as much of a hypocrite as I realize that makes me. The problem I have is that a lot of them are operating from the idea that, since most fantasy worlds are based on societies and traditions where women minded the house and/or were the princess who waited for the hero or the damsel in distress, that's the way their world should be, too (If you look in the comments of my post about the article that's a long justification for why there's a woman on a fantasy cover, there's a link in there to a popular author essentially stating that he created a world with very little room for women to do anything because he didn't deviate from the template he was working from that was like that.), while most female authors seem to operate from liking the whole setup and traditions, but having spent years and years being annoyed that the women didn't do much, and that when they did, they tended to be written as men with breasts. There are, of course, plenty of exceptions on both sides of the fence, but it's what you're most likely to find just in general browsing, though it does seem to be changing more.

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

Re: high fantasy. I guess it might depend on where you are: whenever I browse in my neighborhood bookstores, it's always ten elements this and wizards and bolts of magic and dragons and weird creatures that.

Re: Duncan. Interestingly, he published some fantasy under a female pseudonym.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

If you don't touch anything by whatever company it is that puts out Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms, you'll whittle a lot of that down.

Used Book Shopping is kind of my therapy. Book browsing relaxes me (so does reorganizing my bookshelves) and a UBS makes that really easy, so I end up with a much more random selection a lot of the time than in new bookstores. I also live in a medium sized college/military base town, both of which tend to be heavy into SFF, so it's possible my shelves do have a very different selection.

[kitkat-cat.livejournal.com]

argh...that's another couple of books added to my ever-growing pile of 'books to read' then...

[ulkis.livejournal.com]

Sounds cool. Thanks for the rec!