🌹 I also loved The Ordinary Princess and Crown Duel as a tween but am worried that I won't find the same joy rereading them now. Do you have any recommendations for adult books with a similar vibe?
So, my most recent "Inject this directly into my VEINS" experience with a swashbuckler was with Samuel Shellenbarger's Prince of Foxes. I also really enjoyed Antonia Hodgson's The Raven Scholar, and I think you might especially appreciate Neema's relationships with Cain and Sol since you appreciated Amy's relationships with Perry and her crow and squirrel friends. The author I cut my teeth on with this sort of thing in my teens was Rafael Sabatini, and his Scaramouche might hit some similar notes to Crown Duel. Ditto Ellen Kushner, Swordspoint.
Endorsement from submitter: "A quiet but competent swordsman and his disaster bi boyfriend, written by a pioneer of queer literature."
A classic melodrama of manners, filled with remarkable plot twists and unexpected humor, takes fantasy to an unprecedented level of elegant writing and scintillating wit. Award-winning author Ellen Kushner has created a world of unforgettable characters whose political ambitions, passionate love affairs, and age-old rivalries collide with deadly results.
On the treacherous streets of Riverside, a man lives and dies by the sword. Even the nobles on the Hill turn to duels to settle their disputes. Within this elite, dangerous world, Richard St. Vier is the undisputed master, as skilled as he is ruthless—until a death by the sword is met with outrage instead of awe, and the city discovers that the line between hero and villain can be altered in the blink of an eye.
Fantasy, fantasy of manners, secondary world, queernorm
The Fire's Stone (1990) by Tanya Huff
THIEF, SWORDSMAN, AND WIZARDESS
AARON. Clan Heir, he has fled his people when his beloved was slain by his own father's command, abandoning his training, duty and beliefs to become a thief. A master of his trade, he now dared the odds in Ischia, city of the volcano, where the price of being caught was death.
DARVISH. Prince of Ischia, third son of a king who had no intention of giving up his throne. The prince was a drunkard, a lover, and a wastrel, yet was gifted with sword skills and with the ability to charm all around him. But not even his charm could free him from the political marriage now being planned.
CHANDRA. Born a princess, she had chosen to become a Wizard of the Nine, that rarest of beings, able to master all the forms that sorcery could take. Now, promised as Darvish's bride, she undertook a desperate journey to Ischia to convince him they must not wed.
Aaron, Darvish, Chandra—three strangers whose fates were about to become interwined. For someone had stolen The Stone, the magical talisman which stood between Ischia and the volcano's wrath. And unless the three could learn to work together on a quest to find the Stone, Ischia would drown in a sea of lava.
I got into a conversation about Disco Elysium with @isozyme, whose wife thinks Kim is just a Normal, Rational Guy. And I was like "Does she also think Richard St. Vier is a normal, rational guy?"
And I've been trying to teach myself to draw better on the tablet.
So anyway, here's this PROFOUNDLY NICHE piece of fan art.
Its so funny when you read an older novel that every modern author rips off with much less skill… anyways glory be to alec and richard st vier written by ellen kushner that every single romantasy author tries to replicate their story arc and completely fucking fails
