1 of 1 members found this review helpful.
“You could call this book _The Three Musketeers_ with magic, with a narrator who manages to be simultaneously more overblown than Dumas or Dickens and more to the point. You should know within the first chapter whether the narrative voice makes you laugh or cringe. (I laughed.) If you like the narrator, the historian Paarfi of Roundwood, and you like duels, clever escapes, witty repartee, and a novel that is willing to let characters be larger than life, you'll like the book.
It's worth noting that, if you thought a swashbuckling novel would require women either to stay in the palace or to pass themselves off as men, you'll be surprised. I can't quite explain what Brust is doing with gender in his created world, partially because *he* doesn't really explain it or dwell on it. The female nobles in the book serve as soldiers, fight battles and duels against men, and don't seem to face sexual discrimination while doing so. (Also, one of the male soldiers crochets as a hobby.) The fact that, other than a comment about differences in gendered pronouns in Paarfi the narrator's language, no attention is drawn to the other world's gender equality made the effect much stronger and stranger. It's a bit mindblowing, even though it doesn't seem to be "the point" of the book at all.”
