Swordspoint, Audio Edition

Swordspoint (1987/2011) by Ellen Kushner (Author, Narrator) with Dion Graham, Katherine Kellgren, Robert Fass, Nick Sullivan, Simon Jones

This review is of the audio recording of Swordspoint. Please check my review of the book Swordspoint for my thoughts on the story rather than the recording.

First, Ellen Kushner is the narrator, and like the recording of The Privilege of the Sword, I love her narration. She has a gorgeous speaking voice, and you know the tone and intonation of the dialog is spot on, since she’s the one who heard their voices in her head originally.

The ensemble works very well during the scenes where there are multiple people–it makes it much easier to keep track of who said what.

My only quibble was Alec’s voice. He never sounded like Alec to me. Both Richard and Alec sounded older than their supposed ages in the books, but I always assumed Richard was a bit older than Alec anyway, and Richard always felt more mature than Alec, so I quickly settled into That Voice being Richard. (And it is definitely a Very Nice Voice.)

But Alec? his voice just never felt quite right to me. Which is weird, because now I think about it, Ellen Kushner reading Alec’s dialog seemed perfectly fine to me.

Then again, Alec is described as having auburn hair, and despite repeated reads, I can’t help but see him as dark blonde in my mind.

So, this being one of my favorite books, I had high expectations. And–aside from Alec sounding too old to my brain–they were met. The ensemble cast definitely made the group dialog easy to follow, but I also would have been perfectly happy with just Ellen Kushner narrating the entire thing.

Richard enjoyed his description of love; it was the most accurate part of the play so far, with its images of hot and cold, pleasure and pain. But at the same tie, it made him uncomfortable to hear someone talking about it in front of a great crowd of strangers–even though it was only a play.

Published by Neil Gaiman Presents

Rating: 8.5/10

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