The Fantasy Hive conducts involved interview focusing on Swordspoint series

Jonathan Thornton with The Fantasy Hive conducted a beautifully thorough interview with Ellen Kushner that covered the long history of the Swordspoint series from inception through Tremontaine.

Hi Ellen, and welcome to the Hive. Would you be able to tell us a bit about your Swordspoint books?

Well, it’s very important to know that they’ve all been written out of order. The very first one, which is still the first one, is called Swordspoint: A Melodrama Of Manners. I wrote it back in my 20’s, and it’s been in print pretty much ever since. It’s set in an imaginary city with no magic that is based on all my favourite periods of history; from Elizabethan London, to eighteenth century Paris, to the New York that I was living in in the 1980’s which was a bad and dangerous and beautiful place. It concerns the affairs of a renegade scholar of mysterious origins named Alec who will not give his last name and who is extremely self-destructive; and Richard St Vier, the greatest swordsman in the city, who lives in the worst part of town because nobody bothers him there. At the beginning of the novel, they’ve already been together as a couple for a number of months I would say.

You’ll find mention of Thomas the Rhymer and The Golden Dreidel as well, so click through to read the full interview at “Interview with Ellen Kushner (SWORDSPOINT).”