Swordcrossed by Freya Marske
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Secondary World No Magic, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Brown bi/pansexual MC, gay MC with ADHD, M/M
PoV: Third-person, past-tense; dual PoVs
Published on: 8th October 2024
ISBN: 1035039311
Goodreads

Mattinesh Jay, dutiful heir to his struggling family business, needs to hire an experienced swordsman to serve as best man for his arranged marriage. Sword-challenge at the ceremony could destroy all hope of restoring his family's wealth, something that Matti has been trying—and failing—to do for the past ten years.

What he can afford, unfortunately, is part-time con artist and full-time charming menace Luca Piere.

Luca, for his part, is trying to reinvent himself in a new city. All he wants to do is make some easy money and try to forget the crime he committed in his hometown. He didn't plan on being blackmailed into giving sword lessons to a chronically responsible—and inconveniently handsome—wool merchant like Matti.

However, neither Matti's business troubles nor Luca himself are quite what they seem. As the days count down to Matti's wedding, the two of them become entangled in the intrigue and sabotage that have brought Matti's house to the brink of ruin. And when Luca's secrets threaten to drive a blade through their growing alliance, both Matti and Luca will have to answer the how many lies are you prepared to strip away, when the truth could mean losing everything you want?

I received this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Highlights

~sword-wielding best man
~trade intrigue
~meet-cute < meet-CON
~wonderfully elegant worldbuilding
~thermonuclear levels of heat

Look: Marske has always been a good writer. A great one. A marvellous one, even!

But not until Swordcrossed has she written lines that engraved themselves on my heart in molten gold. Not until this book has she struck me breathless and aching and hurting from how beautiful her story is. Swordscrossed is the first time she’s made me honest-to-gods-WEEP from the sheer tender intensity of the emotions she’s magicked up.

I’m not even exaggerating: I had to put the down and just cry for almost an hour. Not sad tears! Happy tears! And kind of overwhelmed tears, too, because I was just So Full of emotions and had no idea what to do with them. I was shaking!

I’M NOT USED TO FEELING THINGS THIS STRONGLY, OKAY? IT WAS ALMOST SCARY.

Matti didn’t know what to say. There was a bubble of something in his throat, like blown glass or hot chocolate, a tenderness that threatened to sear itself into Matti on a fundamental level.

If I described the plot to you, it would sound like any other fantasy romance. Any other low-magic romantasy. There’s no story-element that makes Swordcrossed unique, exactly. Don’t get me wrong: the plot is INCREDIBLY compelling, there is so much tension-dread-hope keeping the pages turning, and even the most minor characters are vividly alive in a way only the best authors can manage. I was biting my lips and perched on the edge of my seat and frantic to make sure everything would turn out okay – and that is in and of itself an incredible accomplishment when we’re talking about a book where the happy ending is implicitly guaranteed. Books like this often can’t quite manage to sustain any tension, because you know it’s all going to be fine – but I was so nervous! I was so invested! I was genuinely anxious for everyone! Marske made me completely forget that all would be well, so, you know, ALL THE KUDOS FOR THAT!

But the plot’s not – the plot’s not the point. It doesn’t matter, at all, that you’ve heard or read similar stories before.

Because the way it’s written. That. That is what makes Swordcrossed something truly special, something breathtaking.

“I thought I had simple tastes. I don’t care about pearls or silver. I don’t need silk. I can live without cherries and bottles of Diamond Blend.” … “But you,” Matti breathed. “You are the most exquisite thing in this city, and I want you, and I’m going to have you.”

I don’t know if it’s the freedom of not having to fit a story inside real-world history, as the Last Binding books were, or simply growing confidence as a writer, or if it’s something else entirely, but Swordcrossed reads like the work of someone who has cast off all restraint and is exulting in their love of words and storytelling. There are so many more similes and metaphors in Swordcrossed than in any of the Last Binding books, and the effect is extravagant, decadent. You won’t need a dictionary to keep up – the language is every bit as accessible and beautifully easy as it was in Last Binding – but it adds a richness, a lushness, to the prose that makes it obvious how much Marske enjoyed writing this. And that joy definitely comes through to the reader!

Or he could invent a vast family of siblings of all ages for {spoiler}. He could embroider each one lavishly with imaginary traits, and sprinkle them with freckles.

The indulgence – the sense that Marske is writing this book for herself and nobody else – is present in the worldbuilding too. It’s obvious how much pleasure she took in creating this original setting, in being able to invent whatever she liked instead of being limited by writing a story set in a real historical period. There’s a breathless delicacy to every perfectly-placed detail; never so many of them as to become overwhelming, or distract from the plot, but more than enough to elevate the story she’s telling, bring it to life. It’s there in the sensory description, in the figureheads of ships, in all the little moments of plot-irrelevant beauty.

The lascari balls were delicious. Luca licked the last of the sugar off oily fingertips as he walked across a crowded bridge, keeping close to the wrought iron railing, around which was tied a series of ribbons in varying states from fresh to rotting. It was an exam-time tradition common to students destined for the more academic Guilds. Perhaps there was a law school nearby.

And as a self-professed worldbuilding critic/expert, I am so impressed with the worldbuilding here. My preference is for deeply weird and extensive worldbuilding – think Locked Tomb or Teixcalaan – but the elegant simplicity of Swordcrossed wowed me. Marske uses just a few powerful details to convince the reader on a visceral level that this isn’t our world, and languidly explores the ripple effects these additions/changes would make to a society. Case in point, every guild serves/belongs to a specific god, which means members of every trade have different prayers, curses, and holy days/inauspicious days. That’s not an obviously dramatic thing like, say, putting dragons in your fictional world, but it does shape every aspect of the worldbuilding and story, from fashion to business meetings to how the characters speak. It’s subtle, but far-reaching and foundational. And all of the worldbuilding is like that; simple, but just complicated enough to be striking, to turn Glassport into a place so real you could almost believe it really exists just a few countries over.

It’s just a really smart approach to worldbuilding – creating a setting familiar enough to any fantasy reader to feel inviting and comfortable, but unique enough to be interesting and lovely, without so much lore that you might trip up and accidentally contradict it or leave worldbuilding-holes for the obsessives like myself to agonise over.

10/10, stamp of approval, this delights me!

He passed ship after ship and craned his neck to see if there were sailors working in the rigging, or to watch furled sails sway gently against the clouds. He noted which figureheads needed a fresh coat of paint, or had lost some detail of their design through either skirmish or decay. Many of these figureheads were clutching the reef-knotted rope and had the seaweed crown of Itsa, patron goddess of the Guild of Sailors and Shipbuilders. Other deities appeared as well; these ships were likely owned outright, or exclusively contracted to, grand Houses dedicated to some trade or another.

What can I say about the romance, which is, after all, the heart of this book? Dear gods, I cannot even. What can I say, except that I’m not sure I’ve ever believed in a fictional romance this much before? Matti and Luca meet like blades clashing in a duel, and from that complicated first encounter Marske spins first desire – which, please do yourself a favour and make sure you have a spray bottle handy while you’re reading, because you WILL need to spritz yourself regularly to deal with the heat sizzling off the pages! – which then, gradually, so believably, turns to love like straw being spun into gold. And it is – I was going to say ‘very nearly’ unbearable but you know what, no, it is unbearable, I couldn’t bear it, I already told you I had to put the book down and weep because I couldn’t stand it, couldn’t hold all that intensity inside me without breaking open.

He could imagine kissing her, but the thought didn’t turn like a key in the lock of his jaw, leaving his lips parted and famished.

It’s so BIG.

It’s so beautiful.

It’s not the kind of love story that changes the world – they’re not enemy princes of warring nations or something – except for how it is, because it completely upends their worlds. It’s this reminder, which I think I forgot for a while, that all love is world-upending, in one way or another. Sometimes those worlds are more private than others, but that doesn’t make it any less true. You know?

Luca felt like a route being memorised; an artwork being considered one last time by its creator before it was sent for framing. It made him want to make huge, impossible, unwise promises.

Seriously, the intensity!!! *FLAILS* Passion thrums through every line of Swordcrossed like music through a harp-string; the words sear like fire, shine like glass. I want them tattooed all over me. This story sears where you touch it.

It’s not that this is an Epic Fantasy story – as it says on the (stunning) cover, the stakes here are relatively low. It’s not epic in that sense.

But the love feels legendary. Is legendary.

I just. Wow.

“I wasn’t looking,” he said simply.

Greedy: “I made you look at me.”

“I could have been halfway down the aisle, and I would have looked at you,” Matti said. “I could have been halfway across the world.”

Reading Swordcrossed is like rolling rich, velvety chocolate over your tongue, letting it melt in your mouth and flood your senses with intense sweetness. It’s luxurious: you are enveloped in the sensation of being spoiled, and the enjoyment never plateaus; only grows and grows, coiling tighter and brighter until your heart comes apart like a firework in a burst of light and colour and beauty.

I didn’t know romance could be like this. I think I might be ruined for romance by anybody else.

I can’t recommend it enough.

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