Review: “The Swordsman Whose Name Was Not Death”

Brian Collins of Science Fiction & Fantasy Remembrance—“Celebrating the genre magazines, one story at a time…”—reviewed “The Swordsman Whose Name Was Not Death,” first published in the September 1991 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

At first I was wondering what Kushner was up to with this one, since at first it seemed like a pretty standard low-ish fantasy yarn with a stoic tough-guy swordsman at the center—only to find out the tough guy is not the point. Kushner plays with gender and symbolism in a way that is somehow both blunt (it’s pretty hard to miss) and yet timeless. It starts as one thing but then becomes a protracted metaphor for a young woman’s first sexual experience. An unexpected turn of events, but this is one of those surprises that caught me in its trap in the best of ways.

Read the entire review at SFF Remembrance.