(no subject)

[skygiants]

I'm continuing to enjoy Ursula Vernon/T. Kingfisher's forays into high fantasy romance -- I read all of Swordheart in a day while lounging on ep_birdsall's parents' couch, and it's very pleasantly doing the thing that it's doing, which is creating a palatable version of a time travel Viking romance full of characters who enjoy poking holes at the genre they're in.

The premise: middle-aged widow Halla has just unfortunately inherited an elderly relative-by-marriage's estate, and his remaining relatives have locked her in a room until she agrees to marry one of them.

Fortunately, also locked in the room with Halla is a magical sword containing the spirit Sarkis, of a murdered Viking northern mercenary who is sworn to serve the sword's owner!

The first half of the book is mostly them falling in love on the subsequent fantasy road trip, which confused me a little about pacing because I was reading in e-book and therefore didn't realize that there was a whole second half of the book, in which Halla and Sarkis acquire a genderqueer lawyer-priest to help sort out Halla's inheritance issues, plus an ox and a wagon-driver to transport the lawyer-priest, and they all troop back to Halla's town of Rutger's Howe (I'm guessing that's an homage to Ladyhawke;I don't think I'm supposed to be envisioning Sarkis as Rutger Hauer, but who knows) and have several more fantasy road trip adventures and it's all reasonably charming, albeit with a fairly significant amount of murder.

(At first I was mildly put off by Halla's habit of asking lots of questions constantly in the middle of fight scenes, which I was clearly meant to find charming but, like, maybe wait ten seconds for a slightly better time maybe? but I came round on it. Sarkis has, you know, many of the character flaws you would expect from a murder fantasy Viking who lives in your sword, but people generally call him on them, so that's fine.)

Apparently the start of a Vikings Trapped In Swords romance trilogy, at least one of which looks set up to be queer!

Comments

[sovay]

a whole second half of the book, in which Halla and Sarkis acquire a genderqueer lawyer-priest to help sort out Halla's inheritance issues

Apparently I can take or leave sword-sworn fantasy Vikings, but I really want to read the legal half of this book.

Apparently the start of a Vikings Trapped In Swords romance trilogy, at least one of which looks set up to be queer!

Is this a trope? Is it a trope now? Did Vernon just invent it?

[thistleingrey]

Is this a trope?

Doesn't it kind of go with the NW Germanic thing of named swords? I mean, I always thought of them as having soul-slivers at minimum trapped within--Gram, Durendal, Andúril.... (Meant to add: even Roland is English as texts go, not Continental.)

[sovay]

Doesn't it kind of go with the NW Germanic thing of named swords?

Swords having souls makes perfect sense to me; it's falling in love with them that I feel I haven't seen before.

[skygiants]

I think Vernon saw an opportunity to combine two tropes (Significant Swords with Souls + Sexy Time-Displaced Vikings) into a newer, even more dramatic trope and immediately decided to corner the market.

[sovay]

I think Vernon saw an opportunity to combine two tropes (Significant Swords with Souls + Sexy Time-Displaced Vikings) into a newer, even more dramatic trope and immediately decided to corner the market.

I keep forgetting that Sexy Time-Displaced Vikings is a trope. I shelved so many Viking romances when I worked at Waldenbooks, but that was twenty years ago and I thought somehow they had died out.

[schneefink]

Not entirely new: just yesterday I read a Yuletide story based on an anime with pretty much exactly that premise if I understood correctly (but of course I immediately forgot what it's called.) I think they were samurai rather than vikings, but the principle is the same.

[thistleingrey]

Someone who's read more Fritz Leiber than I will have to say whether the "swords" motif in the Fafhrd stories is only ever metaphorical swords-for-hire or whether Leiber plays upon that, too. That's where my mind leaps first, due to the twists (early Pratchett nods to it).

[hebethen]

FWIW, I liked the second half of the book a lot better than the first.

[skygiants]

It started to feel a lot more rounded as a book for me at that point, I think; also I got a much better sense of the characters watching them play off other sympathetic people.

[cofax7]

I too enjoyed this, and I too found the pacing kind of confusing. I kept looking at the story, then at the amount of time Kindle was telling me it would take to finish the book, and going O.O. Still, it was pretty charming despite the number of deaths.

[skygiants]

"Six hours left? That CAN'T be right, they've already admitted their feelings for each other in a busy marketplace after she refused to sell him to the temple!"

Vernon clearly has a thing for people being Pragmatic in the Face of Necessary Death, which I respect while not necessarily agreeing with.

[sophia_sol]

I loved a lot about this book but the whole second half with the genderqueer lawyer priest was just gold. I loved them so much.

[skygiants]

They were a delight, I very much enjoyed the series of enthusiastic sword-logistics experiments.

[conuly]

I enjoyed it quite a bit - it's set in the Clocktaur universe which I assume you've read? - but if the next male romantic partner is full of self-loathing I'm going to seriously question her taste in men.

[skygiants]

I have! I finished the Clocktaur books just in time for this one to be coming out, which was very convenient for me. But yes, I definitely did notice a certain degree of thematic overlap in love interest self-flaggelation...

[conuly]

We've all got our interests, I suppose.

[schneefink]

Road trip with lawyer! I had heard about the first part of the story but not the second, and that now makes it even more interesting.

[skygiants]

I agree with the folks in this post who said that the second half of the story is the best part!

[larryhammer]

This sounds like my flavor of catnip.

[skygiants]

It was a FANTASTIC vacation read.

[musesfool]

I enjoyed it tremendously - even more so after reading the Author's Note saying it was partly in response to Moorcock's Elric of Melnibone, which I read at a much too young age and found really irritating in a lot of ways (oh my god, the brooding antihero needs to shut the hell up about how his life is so hard)- but yeah, the pacing was definitely weird.

[skygiants]

Every time somebody talks about Moorcock it makes me that much happier that I never read Moorcock. >.>

(Didn't he write a very confusing E. Nesbit Bastables fanfic at one point, too?)

[musesfool]

Did he? I noped out after finishing the first four (five? I was a completist in my youth, regardless of whether I was enjoying something) Elric books.