A review by finlaaaay
The Privilege of the Sword by Ellen Kushner

3.0

I much preferred the first book in this series to this one. It was still good, of course - the story of a girl trying to become a swordsman, so it's got quite a lot of gender-bending. And it still has all the high-society stuff from the first book. But I got distracted by the sound effects added to the audiobook, I'm afraid. They added to the first book more than to this one. Also, shifting from some scenes played by a cast, to others narrated entirely by Kushner was confusing. I did quite love the voice of the other narrator, incidentally, the one that narrates the casted scenes. Kushner is indeed good at narration, but the other narrator is like warm androgynous syrup. I thought she should have read the entire book. I could lose myself in that voice.

I might read the next book instead of listening to it. But I'd also quite like to go back and listen to the first one again, actually. Also, I've seen online that Kushner has been collaborating with a bunch of other authors to write sequels to this, so I'm tempted to try that.