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Paladin's Grace by T. Kingfisher
May. 1st, 2021 12:18 pmPaladin's Grace
3/5. Romantic fantasy about a knight whose god has died meeting a perfumer with a complicated past while an unspeakable evil stalks the streets of their fantasy city.
I'm always a bit iffy on her romantic plots (they're very and weirdly old-fashioned, like a better written paperback category romance from the 90's). So this book had some lovely character work with the small community of knights trying to make their way in a world without their god, and the different religious order that takes them in. All punctuated by a gross plot about a serial killer and a lot of ooh, her boobs are so great and ooh, his muscles are so muscley. And maybe I'm just cranky, but there's something over-engineered about the quirkiness here: he knits when he isn't swinging a sword! She has a pet weasel!
Real talk, all of that is true, but mostly this book has a falsely-accused-of-a-crime plot and that is right up there with my least favorite plots of all time, perhaps tied with a but-I'm-too-violent-to-love-you manly wankfest, which, oh wait, this book also has, so there you go.
The community of godless knights is great, though.
3/5. Romantic fantasy about a knight whose god has died meeting a perfumer with a complicated past while an unspeakable evil stalks the streets of their fantasy city.
I'm always a bit iffy on her romantic plots (they're very and weirdly old-fashioned, like a better written paperback category romance from the 90's). So this book had some lovely character work with the small community of knights trying to make their way in a world without their god, and the different religious order that takes them in. All punctuated by a gross plot about a serial killer and a lot of ooh, her boobs are so great and ooh, his muscles are so muscley. And maybe I'm just cranky, but there's something over-engineered about the quirkiness here: he knits when he isn't swinging a sword! She has a pet weasel!
Real talk, all of that is true, but mostly this book has a falsely-accused-of-a-crime plot and that is right up there with my least favorite plots of all time, perhaps tied with a but-I'm-too-violent-to-love-you manly wankfest, which, oh wait, this book also has, so there you go.
The community of godless knights is great, though.