Short Review: Character-driven sweeping tale of court intrigue, thieves, and swordsmen read beautifully by many voices and accompanied by music and sound effects. Witty and funny, a great tale.

Long Review: For those of us well read in the Fantasy genre, this is one of those books that many people expect you to have read. But I hadn’t, until about two weeks of my spare time were swallowed whole by this story.

Richard St Vier is the best swordsman. He lives in Riverside, the “other side of the tracks” which in this story is the “other side of the bridge”. Riverside is the home to thieves, swordsman, and prostitutes. They have their own rules – and those not from Riverside rarely dare to cross within its borders. Meanwhile, up on the hill across the bridge, is the nice side of town – home to the rich and the people in charge.

Much of this story is what I think of as court intrigue – people in power manipulating things behind the scenes to get more power or regain power. As is often the case, those with power use everything, and everyone, at their disposal to shift things to their liking. There are lots of beautiful parties and back room negotiations. Those in Riverside are frequently entangled in the intrigue from across the bridge and it is in midst of these entanglements that we find much of the story. In Swordspoint, duels settle disputes — and when you aren’t a swordsman yourself, then you need someone to fight in your stead. Someone like Richard St Vier, if you are very lucky.

There are a lot of characters to follow. I will admit to sometimes losing track of some of the names for a bit, but anyone important enough to demand attention would soon turn up again and I shortly got everyone sorted out. I wonder if that would have been easier had I been seeing the names rather than hearing them, but the different voices of the audiobook also helped me differentiate the characters as well – so it might not have made a difference after all.

I will admit to having thought about one of my father’s adages about stories a few times during this book: “Who is there to root for?”. Such is the way of things when so many of the characters that get a lot of ‘screen time’ are scheming against each other. It takes a while to sort out everyone’s agendas (that is part of the fun!). But it didn’t take long before I found people to root for and care about. In fact, even when I didn’t like what they were doing, I was often captivated by their machinations. Swordspoint tells quite the tale. It is one of those stories in which you can lose yourself for a while.

On top of being a great story, you might also be considering listening to Swordspoint because of its connection to the new serial story Tremontaine, available in eBook and audio installments. Tremontaine is a prequel to Swordspoint. If that leaves you uncertain about which story to start with, you might want to read the tips from the author on what order to read them.

One last tidbit about the story — in the world of Swordspoint, romantic attachments are quite varied and just as likely to be between those of the same sex as those of the opposite sex. That this is just how things are is so rare as to be a bit of a revelation. We see from the very start that Richard St Vier lives with his lover Alec in Riverside… and the story just barrels onward. No excuses, no hedging – the story tells us how each pair of people relates to one another as we go along. I loved that.

I am more accustomed to listening to more traditional audiobooks which feature a single reader from end to end. This audiobook is very different. It is halfway between a full-cast audiobook and a radio play. Lots of different voices (including a fair amount by the author), intervals of music, and even some sound effects. Click on the second Soundcloud clip below for a sample. It took some getting used to, but overall I enjoyed it. You can also learn more about the creation of the audiobook as an ‘Illumniated audiobook”. The readers were very expressive – and I never found myself confused about who was speaking. Honestly, going back to a ‘regular’ audiobook after Swordspoint took a bit of adjustment. Where was my music? My sound effects?

Book sample:

Welcome to Bordertown: Special Edition: New Stories and Poems of the Borderlands

Edited by: Ellen Kushner and Holly Black
Readers: Holly Black, Ellen Kushner, MacLeod Andrews, Steven Brust, Neil Gaiman, Dounya El-Mohtar, Cassandra Campbell
Extras: Introduction by Terri Windling. There is now a Special Edition version available featuring a fully-produced track of the song “Run Back Across the Border” by Steven Brust, with the author himself on lead vocals,  and Neil Gaiman reading his own poem, “The Song of the Song.”

Short Review: A tantalizing collection of stories and poems from the city at the intersection of the elf and human worlds. We get stories featuring all kinds of characters including runaways, elves, humans, halfies, a bookstore owner, an entrepreneur, an artist, an astronomer, and more.

Long Review: If you are not familiar with Bordertown, this new anthology is a great introduction to the city on the border between the elf world and human world. In the mid 1980s, the Bordertown books paved the way for the popular urban fantasy genre many of us know and love today.

There is a lot to love here. The range of stories and poems was fairly balanced. Lots of points of view, lots of great readers. I warred with myself about posting this review before I even finished listening to all 15 discs, just so you all could know about it sooner – but I decided I wanted to get a sense of the full collection before posting my review.

The readers did a fabulous job across the board. I am often nervous when I see so many different readers for a collection like this, but I think they used the different voices to their advantage. They matched them well to the stories and poems.

One of the challenges of reviewing a collection of short stories is deciding if I am going to review each and every one of them. I have decided against it because I want you to have the joy of discovering them as you go, just as I did. I can tell you that I fell in love with Bordertown. It seemed obvious to me that the contributors to this collection love it too. There are a few stories here that I expect to stick with me for a long time.

The three introductions (one each by Terri Windling, Ellen Kushner, and Holly Black) were a treat. This collection was my introduction to Bordertown and I appreciated being given the perspective of the history of the world and earlier anthologies and novels set there.

I loved the way that the stories weave together, touching each other here and there. The landscape is the same, but from different points of view. The protagonist in story A might show up or just pass through story B.

I have to admit I am more of a fan of the stories than the poems, but maybe I should just say that I think that the stories spoil me with their rich details. I did NOT hear the special edition version, so I might have appreciated Steven Brust’s song more if I had heard it performed. (Wait, I just found a source for the song online: Steven Brust song “Run Back Across the Border” on Soundcloud!)

If you are still not sure, some of the stories are posted online or available via various podcasts. Check out the Welcome to Bordertown web page and scroll down to the bottom.

And if you do fall in love with it, there is a bunch of short stories and even novels which take place in this shared world. You can read more about the history of the Bordertown Series and see a full bibliography.