Thanks to Wicherwill’s review of the latest book in the Saint of Steel series last year, I was reminded that I needed to get back to reading this series! I read the first book in the back in 2023 and enjoyed it, and then a million (approximately) other books jumped in between me and the other books in the series. But I’m back into it!
Plot-wise, this novel is about Istvhan, a paladin (god-touched warrior whose order was prone to berserker fits brought on by their god, but who fought for the people who needed defending). But then his god (who was a god, but was called ‘The Staint of Steel’) up and died, leaving his former paladins alone. In the wake of the god’s death, most of the paladins went mad and ended up dying. The ones that did live (like Istvhan!) are making a living, trying to do good, while also being severely traumatized and dealing with PTSD. In this novel, Istvhan is chasing down some dangling plot threads from the first book in the series.
Then you have Clara, who is a nun from a small, not widely known order, whose sisters have been kidnapped and whose convent has been burned down by said kidnappers, and she is on the hunt for them.
Istvhan and Clara meet while each is engaged in their quests, each one carrying their own set of secrets. They end up working together, and oh yeah, sparks fly. Because religious orders have their own rules in this world, neither Istvhan nor Clara are celibate. Sure there is a whole lot of other stuff that needs to get worked out, and a fair amount of pinning happens, but breaking religious vows isn’t one of the issues.
I recall in the first book getting a bit … frustarted with the pinning. There is a lot of pinning in this one as well, so I’m going to take it that that is a feature of this series. I do understand why the two characters didn’t fall into each other’s arms from the word go, but it did stretch out a bit long.
Speaking of the first book, while this is the second book in the series, and I recommend reading in order I feel like you could probably jump into the books with this one. It has been over a year since I read the first book, so my memory was a little fuzzy … but the threads that this one picks up from book one are explained pretty well, and this story feels mostly self-contained. The first book focuses on a different set of characters, also a paladin from the same order as Istvhan, but is a mystery contained in a city, while this one is a mystery on the road.
I really love T. Kingfisher’s style, she has this kind of humour I enjoy, and she manges to write a really cozy kind of adventure, that still has really horrifying moments, and moments of violence. Even though the stakes that Istvhan and Clara are facing are pretty steep (he’s on the hunt for killers who take the bodies and leave the head behind, her fellow nuns have been kidnapped and their home burned down) it is not … overly tense. It is fun. And then – you’d get hit with something that would make me go “oh ick” out loud, but yet it was still fun. I don’t know how she does it but T. Kingfisher is great at what she does.
While Istvhan is a trained warrior Carla comes with skills of her own …. The book summary doesn’t spell out what she is, or what she can do, but there are hints on the cover and in the name of her order. I really appreciated that Carla more than holds her own, and like a lot of Kingfisher’s heroines is middle-aged. Middle-aged people can have adventures in fantasy worlds too!
I really did enjoy it—another win by T. Kingfisher! I’m now committed to reading through her backlist because I enjoy her writing style immensely.
As I listened to this as an audiobook, I want to shout out the narrator for the delightful way they handled the narration of the animal noises occasionally featured in the book. I also loved the way they voiced Istvhan, it was pretty great.