Tag: swordspoint

Fiorenzo Bibliography + Paperback

FIORENZO is a queer fantasy-of-manners romance featuring hurt/comfort, swordplay, and a happily-ever-after. And it’s finally out in paperback! Shown here with some of the books that inspired it.

The World of the Castrati by Patrick Barbier
Not just a thorough examination of individual castrati lives but also the operatic world that created them. Highly recommended, even (or especially) if you know nothing of opera.

Nicoletto Giganti’s The School of the Sword
A swordfighting guide by a fencing master of Renaissance Venice. This book, combined with As You Wish (see below) and Vico Ortiz’s Fencing 101 class proved absolutely essential to making the fight scenes in Fiorenzo possible.

M: The Man Who Became Caravaggio by Peter Robb
Come for the art history lesson about a queer Renaissance painter, stay for the tennis court castration duel.

Art and Life in Renaissance Venice and Private Lives in Renaissance Venice by Patricia Fortini Brown
While the general history of Venice was necessary (see below), the more specific focus of Brown’s books provided absolutely invaluable insight into the the day-to-day habits of Venice’s historical citizens.

John Singer Sargent: Venetian Figures and Landscapes, 1898-1913
Sargent’s mind-blowing skill with oil portraits is well known, but his watercolour sketches of cityscapes and Venice architecture are truly astounding in their mastery of light and form. Seeing the city through his eyes over a hundred years ago was wildly inspiring.

Sargent, Whistler & Venetian Glass
This was an incredible traveling exhibit of Venetian glassware, lace, and other amazing examples of skilled craft alongside paintings by American artists who drew inspiration from Venice in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. I had the good fortune to catch it as it came through Mystic Seaport in Connecticut. It also included an actual Venetian gondola (dry-docked, no felze) which gave me an invaluable sense of just how absolutely huge those things are.

As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride by Cary Elwes and Joe Layden
Invaluable insight into the training, choreography, and filming process for one of the greatest swordfighting scenes in cinematic history.

The Princess Bride by William Goldman
It’s a swordfighting romance. Enough said.

Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner
It’s a queer swordfighting romance. Enough said. (Although I have said far more.)

Ruskin’s Venice: The Stones Revisited by Sarah Quill
Venice through the eyes of a Victorian.

Venice: A New History by Thomas F. Madden
A general history of Venice was essential in creating Halcyon.

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FIORENZO is a queer fantasy-of-manners romance featuring hurt/comfort, swordplay, and a happily-ever-after. Available now wherever fine books are found!

Amazon • Apple Books • Barnes & Noble • Bookshop.org • Kobo • Smashwords

Book Review – Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner

Did you enjoy Jane Austen or Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell but wished for more murderhusbands?

Do you think any book could be improved with swords?

Do you prefer your characters queer until proven otherwise?

Some have called Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner a “cult classic,” which is a fun way to say a book is criminally underappreciated. It’s a perfect blend of fantasy, intrigue, romance, and edge-of-your-seat action. This forerunner of the mannerpunk (or fantasy-of-manners) subgenre is a marvelous balance of Austenesque social ritual with bloody consequences. A wealth of worldbuilding-through-implication is packed into this shockingly slender volume that leaves the reader ravenous for more.

While it contains far more grit and gore than your average romance, it is still at its core a romance, and a queer one at that – almost every twist of the ever-coiling plot is a direct result of romantic desire either thwarted or indulged. Our heroes, the low-born master swordsman Richard St. Vier and his mysterious academic lover Alec, form the core of this Gordian knot. Though I prefer a Happily-Ever-After over a Happy-For-Now, I concede that Swordspoint‘s conclusion puts the punk in mannerpunk and thus feels wholly appropriate for this one-of-a-kind story.

tl;dr – read Swordspoint and come scream with me, pls.