The Privilege of the Sword

Close-up of a hand holding a gold decorative sword, with ornate clothing and lace cuff details. Text on the image reads: 'Ellen Kushner' and 'The Privilege of the Sword'.

Limited Edition hardcover art from “Portrait of Charles IX of France” by Francois Clouet. Designed by Glen Edelstein

The Privilege of the Sword

The Swordspoint Series #2

Winner, 2007 Locus Award, Best Fantasy Novel. Nominated for 2007 Nebula Award, Best Novel. Nominated for World Fantasy Award, 2007. New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age. Nominated for Spectrum Award. Green Man Review Best Adult Novel. Romantic Times Reviewers Choice Award Winner. Tiptree Honor List. Nominated for Lambda Literary Awards. Nominated for Cybils Award.

From the award-winning author of Swordspoint comes a witty, wicked coming-of-age story that is both edgy and timeless. . . . 

Welcome to Riverside, where the aristocratic and the ambitious battle for power and prestige in the city’s labyrinth of streets and ballrooms, theatres and brothels, boudoirs and salons. Into this alluring and alarming world walks a bright young woman ready to take it on and make her fortune. A well-bred country girl, Katherine knows all the rules of conventional society. Her biggest mistake is thinking they apply.

Katherine’s host and uncle, Alec Campion, the capricious and decadent Mad Duke Tremontaine, is in charge here—and to him, rules are made to be broken. When he decides it would be far more amusing for his niece to learn swordplay than to follow the usual path to ballroom and husband, her world changes forever. And there’s no going back. Blade in hand, it’s up to Katherine to find her own way through a maze of secrets and betrayals, nobles and scoundrels—and to gain the power, respect, and self-discovery that come to those who master. . . .

  • Northampton MA: Small Beer Press, 2006. New York: Bantam/Spectra, 2006. New York: Science Fiction Book Club, 2006 (in Swords of Riverside). New York: Bantam/Spectra, 2007. London: Gollancz, 2016

    Translations:
    Madrid: Bibliópolis, 2006 (El Privilegio de la Espada, Spanish).
    Germany: Goldman, 2008 (Die Dienerin des Schwertes, German).
    Amsterdam: Luitingh Fantasy, 2008 (Het Privilege van het Zwaard, Dutch).
    Tokyo: Hayakawa Publishing, Inc., 2008 (Japanese).

Reviews

  • A fearless and resourceful heroine with a true heart and a keen-edged blade. Spiced with humor and spot-on period detail.

    Library Journal (Starred Review)

  • Great characters, beautiful prose, and swashbuckling combined with depth—I just uncritically adore this book.

    Jo Walton

  • It’s beautifully written, breezy, quick, hysterically funny, poignant and bloody and world-weary and heartrendingly naive by turns. This is a fantastic book, a coming-of-age story, and I love it with a quite deep and unreasonable love.

    Elizabeth Bear

  • If Swordspoint is a perfect gem, The Privilege of the Sword is the gem in its full setting: elegant, wicked, funny, intelligent, and fluent.

    Robert M. Tilendis, The Green Man Review

  • Unholy fun, and wholly fun… an elegant riposte, dazzlingly executed.

    Gregory Maguire, Wicked

  • [A] ripping good yarn that is chock full of engrossing and subversive undercurrents.

    Adrienne Martini, Bookslut

  • 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

  • A magical mixture of Dumas and Georgette Heyer. The dialogue dazzles and so does the swordplay.

    Kelly Link

  • Fantasy’s answer to The Catcher in the Rye.

    John Scalzi

  • My favorite fantasy novel of the year! I haven’t had so much fun reading anything in years.

    Nancy Werlin, Cynsations

  • I adored this book…[F]illed with such quiet, taut beauty I felt like I’d been punched in the stomach.

    Alaya Dawn Johnson

  • [A] delight to read, with colorful, well-defined characters and a droll sense of humor. For newcomers, it is a sparkling introduction to Riverside’s intrigues.

    Yoon Ha Lee, Strange Horizons

  • Plot and style here are in the swashbuckling tradition of Dumas, but the characters are very real beneath their facades, people who bleed when they are cut, even when manners require that they make nothing of it.

    Frieda Murray, Booklist

  • [A]n increasingly edgy, absorbing, sometimes funny, sometimes poignant whole that presents a spectacular tapestry of a finish. There just isn’t a dropped stitch anywhere.

    Sherwood Smith, SFSite

  • Winning high fantasy… a welcome return to the romantic Riverside world Kushner introduced in Swordspoint.

    Publishers Weekly

  • Kushner’s prose is fabulous and her characters vivid.

    Cheryl Morgan, Emerald City

  • Readers will find much to enjoy in this gorgeously written swashbuckler, from the sparkling dialogue to the fascinating setting and finely wrought secondary characters. This novel is epic fantasy at its best—literate, witty and utterly fascinating.

    Natalie Luhr, Romantic Times Book Review

  • The book starts out with a light tone suitable for one of Shakespeare’s comedies… but it develops into something considerably darker…. [I]ts effect will linger long afterward.

    Faren Miller, Locus

  • Splendid—a swashbuckler for women! Katherine is everything I love in a female hero: impudent, lively, idealistic, fierce, and in over her head.

    Tamora Pierce

  • I cannot recommend this book highly enough. As Artemisia’s friend Lydia says of the fictional book within a book, ‘It is full of great and noble truths of the heart. And swordfights.’ What could be better?

    Stella Matutina

  • [I]t is everything you think it is: a romance (in the traditional sense of the word, not the genre sense—well, maybe that, too), a fantasy, a satire. And it is many things that you don’t expect: a pointed commentary on gender, sex, family and love, and a ripping good adventure as well. It is Kushner’s willingness and ability to screw with your expectations that make the novel enjoyable.

    LibraryThing

  • The Privilege of the Sword [is] the sort of story I longed to read in my own teenage years, and still feel energised by as an adult. It is the story of a heroine who not only does not need to be rescued by a man, but who sallies forth to stand up for other girls. One who, in the course of her coming-of-age, fights with swords, uses her head, helps her friends, stands up to unjust authority, makes mistakes and learns from them—and, in so doing, finds new ways to be a woman.

    Nic Clarke, Strange Horizons

  • A lushly written tale of love and vengeance and coming into one’s own. Katherine’s journey to agency is bound to become a feminist classic.

    Helen Pilinovsky, The Journal of Mythic Arts

  • If you’re not into fantasy, this book might still be a good read. It’s definitely a genre-crosser, set in a pseudo-historical fantasy setting where there is no magic at all. It’s part Jane Austen comedy of manners and part swashbuckler. It’s very smart, and the prose is lovely. And it’s got one of the best female protagonists to grace the pages of a fantasy novel this decade.

    The Hathor Legacy

  • Fantasy of manners, coming of age… it’s as though Georgette Heyer met The World of Henry Orientfor a slow dance through once-familiar dramatic tropes, leaving them all slightly askew in their wake. And talk about characters who seem contradictory on the surface, but hold together at center! It’s a book with charm to burn… quite an addictive experience to read.

    Doris Egan, Torchwood & House, M.D.

Audiobook

Narrated by Ellen Kushner and Barbara Rosenblat

Book cover for "The Privilege of the Sword" by Ellen Kushner, featuring an illustrated woman with curly hair in colorful clothing, with text indicating Neil Gaiman as presenter.

AUDIE FINALIST 2012, Best Audio Drama

“Barbara Rosenblat’s gorgeously throaty, charmingly arch voice narrates the third-person scenes, and Joe Hurley’s Alec is simply wonderful; the key to Alec is comic timing, and Hurley has that down—he’s got a lovely drawl with a truly snarky bite to it. As a bonus, Neil Gaiman has an amusing cameo as a flamboyant artist. About as flawless as a production can be.” — Amy Goldschlager, Locus

“You can enjoy this novel without having read/listened to the previous Riverside novel…. I fell in love with both novels when I read them years ago and I was surprised and delighted to discover that the audiobooks actually improve upon the experience. Kushner narrates… and she does an amazing job. Her writing is lyrical and she has the skill as a reader to do it real justice…. Felicia Day is perfect as Katherine. As if that wasn’t enough, beautiful original music has been created to accompany the text.” — Rogue Librarian

  • Narrators: Ellen Kushner and Barbara Rosenblat

    Featuring: 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”), Neil Gaiman (Rogues’ Ball Artist)

    Supporting Cast: Wilson Bridges, Jason Collins, Butch D’Ambrosio, Matt Mendillo, Bill Rogers, Sue Zizza

  • Executive Producer and Director – Sue Zizza
    Co-Producer – Ellen Kushner
    Supervising Producer – Mike Charzuk
    Master Recording, Editing, Mixing – David Shinn
    Original Score Composed – Nathanael Tronerud
    with additional original incidental music by – Tom Curley and Louis Zizza
    Production Assistant – Butch D’Ambrosio
    Project Assistant – Matthew Mendillo

“Splendid—a swashbuckler for women! Katherine is everything I love in a female hero: impudent, lively, idealistic, fierce, and in over her head.”

Tamora Pierce

International Covers

  • The Privilege of the Sword Limited Edition hardcover art from “Portrait of Charles IX of France” by Francois Clouet. Designed by Glen Edelstein

    Limited Edition hardcover art from “Portrait of Charles IX of France” by Francois Clouet. Designed by Glen Edelstein

  • The Privilege of the Sword first edition trade paperback art by Marc Peltzer (background) and Steven Youll (figure)

    First edition trade paperback art by Marc Peltzer (background) and Steven Youll (figure)

  • The Privilege of the Sword French cover (ActuSF, 2022)

    French cover (ActuSF, 2022)

  • The Privilege of the Sword Spanish edition, Bibliópolis Fantastica (Illustration by Alejandro Terán)

    Spanish edition, Bibliópolis Fantastica (Illustration by Alejandro Terán)

  • The Privilege of the Sword Gollancz UK reissue, 2016

    Gollancz UK reissue, 2016

  • The Privilege of the Sword First Japanese edition

    First Japanese edition

“Create Your Own Cover” Contest Winner

“Imaginary” cover by Taline Boghosian, winner of the TPOTS “Create Your Own Cover” Contest (See other winners here.)

Book cover titled 'The Privilege of the Sword' by Ellen Kushner. It features an illustration of a woman with long flowing hair holding a sword, with a historic city and harbor scene in the background, and a silhouette of a man standing by a tree, all in a stylized, illustrated style.

“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

On pages 369-370 of the original printings of the Bantam/Spectra trade paperback and the Small Beer Press hardcover of The Privilege of the Sword (as well as page 6060 of the Science Fiction Book Club omnibus edition Swords of Riverside), some lines were inadvertently left out of one scene.

The scene appears correctly in the mass market paperback (page 453) and in all subsequent editions.

Errata

Spoiler Alert!

This scene occurs near the end of the book. Those who have not yet read The Privilege of the Sword are advised not to read the below corrected page until they have read the book.

  • The man turned his head. She couldn’t hear what he said. “Wait!” she cried. She bolted down the stairs, around the corridor, around another and out the door.

    “It’s you!” Katherine called. “Oh my god, it’s really you!” She didn’t think about whether or not he wanted to be touched; she just flung herself into his arms, and smelt the woodsmoke as he folded her in his cloak.

    “Are you all right?” he asked.

    “Yes, she gasped. “I’m different, but I’m all right.”

    “Good.” Carefully he unwrapped her from the embrace and set her before him. “I can’t stay,” he said. “Your uncle’s finally killed someone.”

    “Oh, no!”

    “Oh, yes.”

    “Are you going to have to fight for him?”

    “No. Not this time. This one’s yours, I’m afraid. I can’t stay.”

    “Please,” she said; “I’ve got things to show you, things to tell you….”

    “Let’s go inside,” he said. “I think that there are things to tell you, too.”