I feel bad about dusting off the booklog just to work off my frustrations, so here’s some relatively quick notes about other books, which will ultimately end on something both positive and—for a change—timely.
First: a standalone from Freya Marske, Swordcrossed. This is a romance novel that is fantasy solely by virtue of being in a secondary world. One of the guys on the cover is the oldest child of a family of wool merchants; the business is not doing well, so he’s going to marry a very nice rich woman. The other guy is the duellist he hires to be his best man, to handle any challenges at the wedding … and also pressures into giving him sword lessons on the side, because the duellist scammed him the night before. Sparks fly, etc.
I enjoyed this very much. None of the emotional beats surprised me, but they didn’t need to, because they were arrived at in very satisfying fashion; and a few of the plot beats did, which was fun. The details of the worldbuilding were well-done, including the religion, and there were lots of cahoots; I reread the last few chapters for the fun of seeing it all fall into place.
Anyway, I finished this and thought, "oh, it’s no-magic fantasy like Swordspoint," and then somehow took several hours to realize that it was almost certainly directly in conversation with Swordspoint because of, you know, the swordfights?! And the central m/m relationship? So that was what I read next.