The Privilege of the Sword by Ellen Kushner

About fifteen years after Swordspoint, young Katherine is sent from the country to her uncle the mad Duke, who has a nefarious but possibly brilliant plan to turn her into the first swordswoman.

Okay, so, it went something like this:

First 100 pages: Restless twitching, sighing, picking of fingernails. God, Ellen Kushner, are you seriously telling me you're letting me down in this universe twice?

Next 100 pages: Oh? Oh! Eeee! Well, why didn't you say so earlier? Oh, but you're still doing that thing where you think all your other characters in addition to Richard and Alek are interesting, and you're still wrong, sigh.

Last half of the book: Clever, clever book! Oh, Katherine! Oh, Alek! You are all marvelous and delightful and I love you to distraction! I take it all back – I didn't mean a word of it. Well, except for the part about the first 100 pages being boring, 'cause they kinda are. Sorry!

So, you know, forge ahead. Because this book made me so, so happy. There's clever cross-dressing and power discourse and privilege discourse and tragedy and beauty. This is a book about powerlessness and self-determination with a female protagonist who dresses as a man and becomes a swordswoman, and it's not really about gender. It's about people, and for that alone I could love it.

The Perilous Guard by Elizabeth Marie Pope

Kate is exiled from the confined court of Lady Elizabeth Tudor to a strange, ancient castle, where she finds herself entangled with faeries on the way to unknotting a recent tragedy.

Huh, really? I could swear someone recommended this to me when I asked for romances, though now I'm not so sure as the only immediate association I have is that whole Cassandra Claire plagiarism thing. In any case there is a nice enough romance, I suppose, though I was otherwise unmoved. Distant viewpoint, brevity, lots of tell, meh. Probably more interesting for those, unlike myself, who can still manage to give a damn about faeries.