The Privilege of the Sword
The World of Riverside • Book 2
by Ellen Kushner
Narrated by Ellen Kushner, Barbara Rosenblat, Felicia Day, Joe Hurley, Katherine Kellgren, Nick Sullivan, Neil Gaiman
Why Listen to This Audiobook?
When your cast includes Neil Gaiman, Felicia Day, and Katherine Kellgren, the audiobook stops being a recording and becomes a full theatrical event.
- Great if you want: witty secondary-world fantasy with a sharp feminist edge
- Listening experience: theatrical and lively — feels like a stage production, not a solo read
- Narration: full ensemble cast; Kellgren and Rosenblat alone justify the runtime
- Skip if: you prefer a single narrator's consistent voice over ensemble chaos
About This Audiobook
Katherine is a well-bred country girl summoned to the eccentric court of her uncle, the Mad Duke Tremontaine, in the labyrinthine city of Riverside. Instead of receiving polish for ballrooms and marriage markets, she receives lessons in swordsmanship. Ellen Kushner's Nebula and World Fantasy Award-winning novel follows Katherine's coming-of-age as she navigates a world where social power is brokered through steel and scandal, and where the rules she was raised to follow simply do not apply in Riverside's theaters, brothels, and aristocratic drawing rooms.
The audiobook production is exceptional, employing a full cast that includes Kushner herself, Barbara Rosenblat, Felicia Day, Neil Gaiman, and Katherine Kellgren, among others. Each voice claims its own space in the narrative without overwhelming the theatrical elegance of the prose. Kushner's world rewards the audio format particularly well: the dialogues snap, the street-level scenes feel lived in, and the multiple narrators mirror the book's chorus of competing social perspectives.
