T. Kingfisher es una crack y no puedo evitar devorar sus libros, sobretodo los de “Los Paladines”.

Romance, fantasía, misterio y grandes dosis de humor. Personajes diversos y dos protagonistas a los que zurraría de lo cabezudos que son en odiarse a si mismos.

Es que lo tiene todo. ( )

Make way, rom-com and severed heads coming through!

What a delightful read! The writing is easy breezy, but it doesn’t mean that everything will be soft and fluffy: gruesome things happen, and this is not a relaxing universe to live in.

I liked the idea of paladins, filled with a god’s grace (well, in the case of this particular god it’s berserker rage that makes them Murderbots ;) ). Then the god dies, and the paladins are broken… and dangerous.

One particular paladin (Stephen) gets embroiled in a mystery that involves assassinations, poisons, lots of severed heads, evil priests, courtroom drama, and a perfumer named Grace. Grace is a scent geek, has past trauma to deal with, and she doesn’t need to be rescued, thank you very much. Oh, and Stephen’s hobby is knitting, when he is not busy intimidating people by being a big muscular guy in armour. Can you tell where this is going?

The rom-com tropes are tropes for a reason: sometimes they work. They work here. Yes, Grace and Stephen do a lot of “but he/she probably didn’t mean anything by this; he/she cannot possibly be interested in me; I’m too broken for her/him, this is a mistake.” Where is that shaker I use to try and make fictional characters see reason? Ah, there it is. Shake, shake, shake. Nope, it’s not working on Grace and Stephen :))) They are both adorable, though, and you root for them.

“He wished that he could break out his knitting, but for some reason, people didn’t take you seriously as a warrior when you were knitting.”

There is a lot to chuckle at, and the dialogues are delicious:

“Yes, I hear there are assassins about.”
“Not very good ones.”
“Sometimes that’s what you want in an assassin.”

I am happy that there are more books in this series (apparently, each paladin gets a book).
T. Kingfisher has yet to disappoint me, it seems ;) ( )

I enjoyed the change of pace. This was pretty slow going initially but I liked getting to know the world and the people.
The writing is immersive and the characters, as well as the world, are well constructed.
After the introduction, the story quickly becomes an incredibly angsty romance that involves a whole lot of one step forward, two steps back.
I liked being with the cast and experiencing their daily lives and entanglements so this didn't bother me too much.

The biggest flaw of the book makes itself known when it moves towards the climax.
The pacing picks up and things come to a head and it all leads to a court case.
This is where things fall apart. The entire lawsuit makes no sense. This court of law works very much like a modern court with all its bells and whistles except the possible punishments are medieval. It's all really weird.
It could've worked at least somewhat if the entire thing was a staged farce with lots of bribery and blackmail but it isn't. The judge is even explicitly introduced as sympathetic towards the accused but despite all that, the accused is supposed to be executed without a single piece of proof.
It's infuriating that the reader is supposed to actually take this as a reasonable outcome pertaining to the circumstances.
This is the one core point around which the entire plot pivots and it makes no sense.

Beyond that one thing, there isn't anything in the story that requires deductive reasoning or any kind of sharp logic and the author manages to keep everything beyond that vague enough to not get entangled in that sort of flawed reasoning anywhere else.
I don't have high hopes that later books in the series will be any better in that aspect.

I'll maybe try the second one at some point but for now, I will not continue with the series. ( )

The characters' refusal to talk about their feelings was an annoyance like other works by T. Kingfisher, but still a fun read.

4.5

It’s dumb after so many years that Goodreads doesn’t have half stars. This book was very good. 3 more words.’ ( )