Hello everyone!
I had such fun reading this week’s book, Paladin’s Grace by T. Kingfisher (aka Ursula Vernon). It kind of took over my life for a couple of days? I’ve read a few of T. Kingfisher’s books before, I even voted for one in the Hugo’s last year! But what I mostly know her by is her other name, Ursula Vernon, and I know her from being one of the regular co-hosts on one of my favourite writing podcasts, Ditch Diggers. She is also an excellent person to follow on social media, as she is not afraid to fight the internet when people are wrong.
But back to Paladin’s Grace. Oh my gosh, the perfect intersection of Romance and Fantasy. I love both genres and this baby is the best of both. We have a hero with a tragic back story, but a heart of gold. We have a heroine with a terrible ex and a really interesting hyper focus. We had a world with gods (dead and otherwise), poisonings, and creepy things that go bump in the night! Also a pet civet cat called Tab.
The story is about Grace, a perfumier who is falsely accused of poisoning a visiting diplomat, and Stephen, the Paladin of a dead god who is now essentially volunteering at a temple. When his god died he went into a beserker rage and he is deeply scared of that happening again and that he might hurt people. Meanwhile, Grace is terrified of losing what she has built after a life of disruption and abusive men taking the credit for her work. As is always the case in the best books, their fears come true and they have to face them together. The story is a romance, but also a crime novel and all set in a fantasy world that felt very Dungeons and Dragons inspired, but in the best way. Honestly, next time I play D&D (or similar TTRPGs) I am going to write in that my character has a copy of this book in their backpack because it would be sooo fun to play a character who loves it as much as I do, or maybe even more? Maybe a Paladin’s Grace fangirl? Is that a character build I want to try making? Hmmm, keep an eye on this space folks, I might be doing that in the future!
I had such fun with this book, like I said I basically read it in 24 hours as I started it one evening and then finished it the next afternoon.
Both the characters have a traumatic past, both have PTSD and work to push through it when they would probably be better off taking a minute and letting themselves heal. Both have people (or a civet cat) that they rely on and that they are shown to have strong ties with. Which is lovely because it is a frequent fault in both Romance and Fantasy that characters are lonely souls, with no one (except perhaps a sidekick) by their sides. No, they had friends. And it turns out I love reading about characters having friendships. I’m going to have to add that to my trope list going forwards, characters need friends that can tell them they’re being stupid and hug them and have the same thing done back to them. I just crave the community.
It felt very Pratchett-ian and as a massive Pratchett fan, you can bet that that is a compliment. The characters felt like people who had lived, not just appeared on a page one day. The world building was incredible, and I am almost more interested in finding out about the world than I am about the characters. Luckily, the series follows the classic Romance trope of each book being from the point of view of some other couple, so you get a steadily widening view of the world, while still keeping a link to the characters in earlier books. You can bet I will be picking up the rest of the series.
I genuinely found this story delightful. I would highly recommend any blend of Romantasy fan read it, whether you are more on the Romance or the Fantasy side, you will not be disappointed.
Here is a link to where you can pick it up!
See you next time!
K
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