tamaranth | 2023/174: Paladin's Faith

2023/174: Paladin's Faith — T Kingfisher

There was supposedly a whole language to fan signals and where you carried it and how you fluttered it and where your gaze went while so fluttering. Wren had no idea how you learned that language. Her fan had bluntly pointed wooden handles and she was fairly certain that if she held it right, she could jam the closed fan into someone’s eye socket with enough force to break through to the brain. [loc. 2171]

I preordered this, and read it within a day of it appearing on my Kindle: but I confess I was disappointed, and it's taken me a while to work out why.

It would have helped immensely if I'd reread the previous books in the series: Paladin's Grace, Paladin's Strength, and Paladin's Hope. While not a direct continuation, several of the characters in Faith have appeared, with greater or lesser agency, in the previous novels: I could also have done with a refresher on the world of the White Rat, especially as I have been labouring under a misconception regarding the connection between Swordheart and the Paladin series. And finally, the 'it's just me' rationale: I was overloaded with other stuff and found myself reading whole pages (at least!) without retaining much. So, when the next novel in the series is announced, I'll reread all four novels of the story so far.

The plot is fun. Our Paladin for this episode is Shane (a name I cannot take seriously due to a kid at primary school), who has extremely low self-esteem and a connection to the Dreaming God as well as to the mysteriously-deceased Saint of Steel. The Dreaming God deals with demons, and there are certainly demons in this tale, one of whom is rather likeable. Shane is assigned, with his fellow paladin Wren (who is forced to dress up as a noble lady for plot reasons, and does not care for it at all), to guard Marguerite Florian, an accomplished spy who's being hunted by the Red Sail cartel. Marguerite is immense fun and extremely pragmatic. Romance ensues -- though Shane and Marguerite have very different levels of sexual and / or romantic experience -- with typical* obstacles: holes in the ground with teeth, demons with ambition, missing horse urine, unreliable exes, and clockwork sex toys. And an inventor whose machine might change the world...

I think a reread -- including the Clocktaur duology, which I left unfinished after being told a major spoiler -- might be overdue, now I come to think of it.

* typical for T Kingfisher, anyway.