Book Review: "Swordcrossed"
Romantasy superstar Freya Marske has crafted yet another steamy and compelling blend of romance and M/M romance that is as touching as it is titillating.
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Warning: Some spoilers for the novel follow.
I fell in love with the works of Freya Marska when I picked up A Marvellous Light and knew that I was reading someone who really understood queer love and sexual desire and was doing the good work of bringing that sensibility into the world of fantasy. It was exactly what I was looking for, with lots of gay love, magic, and a plot that kept me hooked from the first page to the last, as the various heroes and heroines of the story worked to keep Britain’s magic safe from those who would use it for their own ends.
Now, with Swordcrossed, she takes us to a different world but one no less fully realized. This is a world of various guilds and mercantile interests, of families constantly competing with one another for power, influence and wealth, and of duelists who sign up with those willing to pay them to defend their honor. It’s also a world in which queer desires are normal and accepted, which is more than a little refreshing given the extent to which the real world in which so many of us live seems to become more queerphobic with every passing day.
At the center of Swordcrossed are Matti and Luca. When the novel begins the fortunes of Matti’s house are on the decline, and he hopes that by marrying the heiress of another powerful (and much wealthier) family that he can fill their coffers and keep them from plunging even further into financial misery. Unfortunately, things get a bit more complicated when he runs into Luca, a flame-haired rascal who tries to embroil him in a con. As the two find themselves drawn closer together, more and more secrets come to light, with major consequences for both of them and for their respective families.
The sexual tension between these two characters is clear from the beginning, and this is very much an enemies-to-lovers story. Matti is tightly-wound and utterly beholden to his family, often to his own detriment. Luca, on the other hand, has a bit of a devil-may-care attitude toward…well, pretty much everything. It’s precisely this clash of personalities that adds a potent frisson to their fledgling relationship, and as they grow closer it’s clear that each of them brings something unique to the bond. Despite the difficult circumstances of their meeting, they manage to bring out the best in one another, sometimes despite themselves.
The stakes in this novel are significantly lower than they were in The Last Binding, and that’s totally okay with me. Not every novel has to have the fate of the world or of a nation hanging in the balance, with everything contingent on whether a couple gets to the bottom of some central mystery (while also discovering just how much they really love each other). Even so, Marske is once again adept at giving us a few mysteries that we get to solve along with the characters, particularly once it becomes clear that Matti’s family’s misfortunes aren’t entirely the result of accidents but are, instead, the result of a betrayal from a loyal retainer. She knows how to keep you interested and invested in these characters and their various explorations and investigations, even as we’re also very much wondering just how, or whether, they’ll manage to overcome their differences to find romantic bliss.
As with her previous trilogy, Swordcrossed features some very erotic sex scenes between Luca and Matti. If you know anything about my reading habits, you’ll know that I’m a staunch believer in the power of gay sex scenes, and I appreciate that Marske has once again shown that she’s not afraid to give us a very intimate look at the sexual experiences between two men. Just as importantly, the sex actually serves a purpose other than mere titillation (though, to be fair, there’s nothing wrong with titillation for its own sake). Instead, their sexual encounters allow Matti and Luca to find shelter from the various parts of their lives with which they have difficulty dealing. The haze of sex, and the power of offering up one’s body to another, is its own sort of shelter.
I’ve written before of my preference for dual point of view stories, and Swordcrossed shows why this is such an effective way of storytelling. Since we get both Matti’s and Luca’s perspectives as the novel goes on, we understand them as individuals and thus want them to succeed, both in terms of coming to terms with their families and in their romance. Most of Matti’s anxiety comes from the fact that the burdens of the family and its misfortunes have fallen on his shoulders, to such an extent that he has to go for daily swims in order to work out his anxiety. Unlike Matti, Luca has never been the type of person to take his responsibilities very seriously and, in fact, his entire problem is that he has left behind his family, leaving them in the lurch. Watching these characters figure all of this out is one of the great pleasures of this book.
I do have a minor quibble with this book, and it’s one that I have with a lot of recent fantasy. Swordcrossed, like many other fantasy books that have been released in the past few years, doesn’t contain a map. This isn’t necessarily a problem when the narrative is as tight and focused as the one in this book, but I would have liked to be able to situate the characters and their families in space. I don’t know when fantasy publishers decided that it was a good idea not to have the thing that a lot of fantasy fans expect in their books, but I really do hope that this trend changes.
That being said, the novel does contain some very nice worldbuilding. As with the best of fantasy, this feels like a world that the characters actually live in, and I particularly applaud Marske’s commitment to learning a lot (and I do mean a lot) about wool and dueling. I do hope that she writes more in this universe, so that we can learn about it and the fascinating queer folks who call it home.
Overall, I found myself blazing through this book at record speed. Marske is one of those fantasy authors who has the ability to keep you invested in both the character and the story. Swordcrossed is filled with longing and steamy sex scenes, loveable main characters and equally compelling side characters, and everything else that you could want in romantasy. It’s definitely a novel I’m going to return to in the future, and I can think of no higher compliment than that.