Quillifer Contest!

Paul Di Filippo wrote a lovely review of Quillifer for Locus Online.   Here’s your takeaway:

” . . . chockful of derring-do, blood and thunder, swashbuckling, and other good stuff evocative of Rafael Sabatini, Sir Walter Scott, and the penny-bloods: venomous and dangerous court politesse, reversals, betrayals, cowardice, heroism, illicit sex, allegorical theatrical productions, dangerous hunting expeditions, privateering and, at last, open warfare against the forces of Clayborne. During all of these excursions, Quillifer maintains his admirable sangfroid and cheek, never quite a full hero, but never a total antihero either. Despite Orlanda’s presence, it’s not precisely a tale of Swords and Sorcery. Rather, you might dub it Rogues and Rogering.” 

Rogues and Rogering?  Gotta like that.  Since I invented Swords and Singularity with Implied Spaces, I now seem responsible for a couple of subgenres.

Gary K. Wolfe also wrote a laudatory review in Locus, but it’s not online so I can’t link to it.  In it, he mentions a Donald Barthelme story about a National Writer’s Examination in which participants are required to come up with four archaic words for “sword.”

So let’s do that!  Give me four archaic words for sword, and the three best lists will win a free audiobook of Quillifer.

En Garde!