We return to a world without the Saint of Steel, but with a lot of the god’s brooding former knights.
Plot: Marguerite Florian, who folks might remember from her brief appearance in the first book, is in trouble. Well, she’s a spy, so she’s always in trouble, but this time it’s serious. Because her employer wants her dead. After two years of trying to sort this out herself, per her usual style, she realized that there was only one way to secure her safety. Destroy her employer. Fortunately, since her employer is shady as hell and trying to actively suppress highly desirable new technology, the vaunted Temple of the Rat is on board to help. They give her two Saint of Steel knights to protect her as she searches for the originator of the technology and keep an eye out for a cult. Shenanigans ensue.
I’ve had a hard time connecting with the last couple of entries, and this one is no different. I had a hard time getting a sense of the characters. Shane, our hero, can best be described as an Eeyore. Everything is the worst. He’s the worst. Everything he sees and does and thinks is the worst. I think a lot of readers will find this honestly very compelling and relatable. Especially given how many of the Saint of Steel knights are kind of like this, I found this characterization, especially in lieu of anything else, to be thin and tedious. Marguerite too, has been other people for so long that she doesn’t really have a personality of her own beyond Person Who Survives By Talking. And we don’t get to see either of them develop from these baselines into anything richer. It also makes it hard to get immersed in their connection to each other.
Then there’s the plot itself, which honestly I had a hard time following. There’s a big to do about salt taxes and its implications on the supply chain and what I guess could be described as national security, but it never felt immediate? Even our heroes didn’t seem in a particular rush considering the massive societal implications and also direct and imminent threat to their lives. And then a cult shows up and the salt stuff just kind of gets buried and solved with a hand wave.
It’s T Kingfisher. Will I read the next book? You bet I will, but it does seem like she’s losing steam on this series.
