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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Michael Tree" data-source="post: 1596534" data-attributes="member: 1455">I apologize for the late start.  One thing after another has kept my reading to a minimum.Joe, the answer to why I chose it is a bit of all three.  I stumbled across it on my own, remembered hearing about Kushner from a friend, and then read a review. I was looking for a Katherine Kurtz book in the library, and saw Kushner's book next to it.  A friend of mine once recommended her Thomas the Rhymer to me, so I was intrigued enough to look at some mini-reviews at Amazon, which intrigued me.  I picked it for the book club because it was described as a swashbuckling faerie tale, and we hadn't read books of either description.For what it's worth, it was in the literary fiction part of the library, not in the fantasy/sci fi section.I thoroughly enjoyed it, though it wasn't what I had expected.  It doesn't really fit into any genre, but it's not very swashbuckling, aside from perhaps the swordfighting and the barbed repartee, and it's definitely not a faerie tale.What is it to me?  First, it's a good story, with twists and turns which, unlike most fantasy books, I couldn't predict.  I don't try to predict what's going to happen in books, but the majority just come to me.  In Swordspoint, the writer skillfully pulled my expectations in one direction, and then did something completely differen, but without being jarring or 'clever'.  For example, at the trial I was expecting that Alec might say that he had hired Richard. But as soon as Richard himself wondered that, I realized that wasn't going to happen, and had no idea how it was going to actually turn out.  The sequence leading from the "curse of the Swordsman play" up to the duel with Applethorpe was similarly well concieved. The reader would normally expect a duel between St Vier and the aged Applethorpe was a foregone conclusion, but the 'curse' on St Vier injected enough uncertainty to make any result a possibility.I wasn't expecting the sexuality, but I found it refreshing. All too often, IMO, when fiction has gay characters, being gay is their primary character trait and purpose.  Here, they were interesting characters who happen to be gay, not 'gay characters' who are interesting.  Don't get me wrong, it's good to have sexuality explored in fiction, but IMO it's healthy to have gay characters that aren't focused on exploring sexuality.I connected with a few of the characters, but I don't really know if 'cared about' is the right way of describing it.  I sympathized for Michael Godwin, and was concerned about him. I would even say I liked him, after he stopped being such a ponce. But Alec was the most fascinating.  I was interested in learning more about him, and what he would do next. While he certainly wasn't very likeable, his spiral of self-destruction was very realistic, and held a morbid fascination for me.  In modern times he would probably end up diagnosed with 'borderline personality disorder' and hospitalized as a danger to himself.   Finally, I was interested in St Vier, but couldn't really connect with him.  I felt there was more than he showed, and the hints of his own fatalism were interesting, but there was something that blocked feeling more empathy for him.  Perhaps was wrote him to feel as uncommunicative and disconnected as he would seem to other people in his life.</blockquote>

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