#bookreview The Sword in the Street by C.M Caplan

Hello and welcome back to the blog, and hello if this is your first time stopping buy.

Today I have a book review for you. The Sword in the Street by C.M Caplan. He was kind enough to mail me a physical copy. 

Beware of spoilers, you have been warned!

The Sword in the Street is book 1 in The Ink and the Steel series, an adult  self published fantasy. 

John Chronicle is a hired sword, which is someone who duels for both the entertainment, the settlement of laws and the simplest grievances that the élite of Hillside have with one an other.  His patron, the Lordess Triumph, doesn't pay John the same as other hired swords because of his background and status. He lives in the Dregs, a slum like part of the town and his debts keep getting higher. 

John's boyfriend Edwin, is an autistic university student who comes from a better to do family then others who live in the dregs but their support is minimal at best. He loves John and wants him to do well but wishes he has a less dangerous job. But still supports him regardless. 

Edwin and his university friend Aubrey have been looking into freeblades and how once before hired swords could work for themselves anyone could hire one if they had the money to do so. Freeblads where outlawed and Aubrey is convinced that the use of thaumaturgy, a lost art involving the writing out what you wish to happen crossing out the vowels and repeated letters, making the letters remaining into a sigil. 

"Edwin" she teased, "haven't you ever wondered why casting magic is called a spell?"

Edwin believes it is all superstition.

This dismissal of belief doesn't stop him from making a sigil himself to help John win his next duals and succeed in life.

*

The Sword in the Street while having the politics of hired swords and freeblades and  all the other sorted Hillside and Dregs happening, it also focus a lot of John and Edwin's relationship and how their own traumas and mental health issues factor into things. 

John has trauma from his past that is still haunting him and he doesn't seem to handle it well, he also is a little too self centered. He does things without fully thinking about the end result. He does thinking it will help him but never taking the time to realize it will hurt others. 

Edwin as I said is autistic and of all the characters the one I like the most in the story. John seems to get frustrated alot with him and Edwin is trying to explain how he doesn't understand some of the things other people do, and how explains it to John stood out to me.

"Imagine...imagine...imagine.." His voice rose as if he was building the momentum of his own thoughts. He stalked back into bed and threw his arms around John. " Imagine you can speak fluently in your own language, but there's almost nobody else who speaks it. Nobody else is around to hear that beauty. You speak whole stanzas of verse and construct the most beautiful poetry, but it's not in Gauthic, so you might aswell  be speaking gibberish. There's no one around who understands your language" 

John only stared

"That's what it's like," Edwin finished, panting. " That's absolutly what it's like. That's why I am as I am"

That whole exchange, I haven't posted it all here, you will have to read the book to see it all, resonated with me. It was real and I am so happy to see it in a book. 

As you see I haven't given it a star rating, I'm honestly still trying to decide that for myself. I'm interested in the next book, I'm thinking magic might be more in book 2, I could be wrong that's just a guess. 

Like I said Edwin is my favorite character and by far the one who grew the most in this book. We see him having to deal with himself alone with out his ash supply to steady his thoughts, we see him without John and realizing that while he might not notice all things like others do he recognizes that not meaning to he can be a bit much (at times) for others even while having nothing but good intentions. 

John still needs some growth, but by the very end of the book we see that he is finally on the right track.

Well written and well thought out book. 

Thank you again C.M Caplan for gifting me a copy. 

If you would like your own copy head on over to Amazon (currently on sale for. 99 as of the date of this review)

Don't forget to add it to Goodeads 

About our author 

(Taken from his website, link below)

C.M. Caplan is the author of The Sword in the Street. He’s a quadruplet (yes, really), mentally disabled, and he spent two years as the Senior Fiction Editor on a national magazine – while he was still an undergrad in college.

He has a degree in creative writing from Salem State University and was the recipient of the university’s highest honor in the arts. His short fiction also won an Honorable Mention in the 2019 Writers of the Future Contest.

Caplan’s introduction to fantasy came through J. R. R. Tolkien and George R. R. Martin. He has a tattoo that roughly translates to Valar Morghulis, as written in Tolkien’s Elvish script, in an acknowledgment of that fact. 

He currently lives in New England, where he works remotely for a social justice theater company.

You can find him here:

Website/Goodreads/Instagram/Twitter