Caesar was ambitious.....

[ellenkushner]

While responding to a letter from a student in Indiana looking for "the quote from the beginning of the original print. Which is the information I was trying to gather on the book, I can never remember that quote and the book mysteriously disappeared from the library the year before I left high school." - I think he means the epigraph, and so lazily searched Google for Swordspoint Plato Thurber - I came across lines from a Swordspoint review on that made me laugh out loud:

The book is filled, however, with intrigue and fantasy-kingdom politics, which does nothing for me. In fact, I found myself rolling my eyes at the first half, which reminded me overly of Julius Caesar.

Hey - if that's what it takes to get compared to Shakespeare - well, I'm not proud!