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Our story opens in the same location, but decades later, than Swordspoint. Basil St. Cloud is an obsessive professor of ancient history at the university. Threadbare and austere, he ignores the back-biting and scheming of his fellow scholars, and hunts for knowledge in dusty tomes. It comes as a total surprise when he notices a beautiful young student attending one of his lectures: Theron Campion. He never expects to get drawn into an affair. Theron is a hedonistic young nobleman who dabbles at being a student. He's also the son of the now-dead Alec from Swordspoint who went abroad to escape some unspecified trouble (about which you'll find out in Book 3 The Privilege of the Sword) and didn't reappear for decades. Then, in his old age, Alec Campion returned home with his foreign wife Sophia who is Theron's mother. The person now controlling the family lands and fortune is Theron's cousin Katherine, a duchess in her fifties who inherited when Alec went abroad. Her story as a young girl is told in The Privilege of the Sword. But what about Richard St. Vier and Alec Campion, you might ask. So did a lot of fans who were bitterly disappointed not to get the further adventures of one of the first gay couples to show up in fantasy fiction in Swordspoint, thus paving the way for homoerotic fiction in general. St. Vier and Alec have always been of secondary interest to the author who once again puts the political intrigue front and center. In fact, St. Vier is only mentioned once in this book as a ghost that Theron saw in the Riverside house long ago – practicing forms, of course, with his sword. Accept The Fall of the Kings for what it's willing to offer: more political intrigue, and a new gay relationship with new characters. Theron is a more beautiful, innocent, and self-confident person than his bitter and sarcastic father Alec. He is used to being admired, and takes many male and female lovers. When the novel opens, he's just been dumped by a female artist for whom he was secretly modeling in the nude. (The nudity will have repercussions!) On the rebound, he flirts with gruff and serious Professor St. Cloud. But the two, while not exactly falling in love, ignite a mutual passion and fall into a hot and scandalous affair. Here is where fans of Swordspoint can sigh in pleasure: the sex scenes are slightly more plentiful and somewhat more explicit in The Fall of the Kings. But the political intrigue comes first, as always. It turns out that the northern part of our unspecified medieval country wants a return to the monarchy. The lords currently in power have been enjoying their oligarchy very much, thank you, and are determined to quash any hint of an uprising. Especially unsettling to them are the legends of the unholy alliance between the kings of old and the wizards who were their gay lovers and advisors: the bond of wizard-and-king helped to re-ignite the spiritual energies of the land itself which has been languishing ever since the overthrow of the last king. You can probably see where this is going. Beautiful young Theron has always had recurring dreams of being a king. St. Cloud, uncovering ancient magic in his ancient tomes, is already stepping into the wizardly-advisor role. The paranoid nobles have spies lurking at the university, and it is only a matter of time before the scandalous relationship of Theron and St. Cloud comes to their attention. Here at ObsidianBookshelf.com, I have to proclaim The Fall of the Kings a fun read. Plus, the cover art by the amazing Thomas Canty is gorgeous. Living up to its classification as fantasy fiction, The Fall of the Kings even involves magic – something avoided in Swordspoint and The Privilege of the Sword. Perhaps this is the influence of fantasy writer and historian Delia Sherman, Kushner's partner, who co-wrote this book but not the other two in the series.
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