{Put This One on Your TBR List} Review of Miscellaneous Selections by T. Kingfisher/Ursula Vernon by Karen S. Wiesner

 

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Review of Miscellaneous Selections by T. Kingfisher/Ursula Vernon

by Karen S. Wiesner 

T. Kingfisher (the pen name of Ursula Vernon) is a versatile author, illustrator, and artist. She has a page on her Red Wombat website labeled Short Stories that includes links to her short stories and articles, some of which are included in a variety of different anthologies. From this page, you can read them free on her website and/or from online magazines. 

https://redwombatstudio.com/short-stories/

Nearly all of these freebies have won awards, too. The genres run the gamut. There's a little of everything, as you'll soon see in the reviews below. I went into this endeavor not entirely sure what I was getting into, but I was pleasantly surprised for the most part with the majority of these selections that are worth seeking out. As they'll cost you nothing, you have everything to gain, nothing to lose! 

Beware: May contain unintended spoilers! 

"Jackalope Wives" and "The Tomato Thief" by Ursula Vernon: Although these two, connected stories are contained in T. Kingfisher's collection Jackalope Wives and Other Stories, they were written under the author's real name. Go figure. The duo features Grandma Harken, a clever old woman who is far more than who…and what… she seems. She lives in a house with its back to the desert, and she understands this harsh environment much better than most. Her biting humor and compelling way of looking at the world around her make both stories irresistible.

In "Jackalope Wives", Grandma Harken's daughter Eve has a very foolish son who's, unfortunately, much beloved by the females. However, he's only attracted to a jackalope wife. This shy being has the capability of removing her skin to dance under moonbeams. The boy does something stupid to obtain one, and Grandma Harken has to set things right. This very unusual folktale has an interesting message: "You get over what you can't have faster than you get over what you could. And we shouldn't always get what we think we want." Strange things happen in the desert, indeed!

In "The Tomato Thief", Grandma Harken is determined to find out who's daring to steal her famous, homegrown tomatoes. The answer surprises her and forces her to act. If she doesn't, those living in the desert will be in grave danger. It's very hard not to fall in love with a story with lines like these two gems: "Sometimes the best cure for life was a ripe tomato" and "…there was no telling how low a body would sink once they'd started down the road of tomato theft."

I loved both of these stories. They were my favorites of all included on this webpage.  I'm left wanting more of Grandma Harken and her hilarious wisdom. 

"Metal Like Blood in the Dark" by T. Kingfisher: Artificial intelligence identifying as a brother and sister lose their creator and have to fend for themselves in a universe their Father has warned won't be kind to them. Soon, Brother and Sister are discovered by an alien creature that kidnaps and forces them to work for him.

What an unexpectedly moving tale. I've never read anything quite like this tale that postulates the idea that lying is something like an error code in formatting and computer processing. "Lying was to be deliberately in error, and to express that error in others. Error without correction. Error entered into by choice." Further: "What did a lie do, once you let it loose? Did it sit still…or did it go spinning off into a chain reaction…" In a computer, processes and subprocesses might learn to "lie", which would wreak falsehoods and cause them to report back that something was fixed when it was still broken and vice versa. More than this, once you lie, you realize others could lie as well. With this knowledge, could a person or even a computer go back to how they were before learning the truth? In this story, Sister learns that knowing others lie could very well be the only way to keep from falling into error. But, oh to be ignorant of such darkness! 

"The Rose MacGregor Drinking and Admiration Society" by T. Kingfisher: Be prepared for raucous hilarity! Fairy man, bull selkie, and horse fae--three paranormal paramours get their comeuppance in a human woman with a taste for exotic lovers. While each has treated human females badly, they've never been on the other end of such ruthless seduction. They take to meeting regularly around a campfire to discuss the state of lingering wounds to their pride. This was quite a twist on Casanova stories. I'll be darned if I didn't burst out laughing nearly every sentence while reading this brief but very vivid sojourn into unexpected territory. Talk about perspective. 

"Sun, Moon, Dust" by Ursula Vernon: This story clearly came to T. Kingfisher as a precursor (or a lingering leftover) of the days when she was writing Swordheart (do a search for my recent review of it on this blog). A farmer boy gets a magic sword from his dying grandmother. She instructs him to call forth the magic--three warrior spirits that are bound inside the sword--who will teach him. But his grandmother is wrong about who will be teaching whom. Sometimes the learned ancient can discover something new from the young and simple. I enjoyed the twist in this story. 

"Elegant and Fine": This one wasn't ascribed to either T. Kingfisher or Ursula Vernon. It was probably the only one I didn't love. The author puts Susan from C. S. Lewis's Narnia Chronicles as the main character and has her pining for a Dwarf lover she never knew the name of when she has to return to the real world--and her life as a child. I don't like it when a writer takes someone else's work and does things with it that the original author probably would never have wanted. I wish this story had cast a wholly unique character from the author's own imagination into the thought-provoking scenario she presented here. Sigh. But enough said about that.

"Godmother": Another entry not ascribed to either author name. According to the author, it was the catalyst for T. Kingfisher's Nettle & Bone (which I've already reviewed on this blog). There's something poetic about this flash-fiction that evoked lovely images cast in shadows and equal amounts of confusion for me. 

"Bluebeard's Wife" also doesn't have an author listed but it was included in the T. Kingfisher Toad Words and Other Stories collection. Pirate Bluebeard's notorious, bloodthirsty reputation with women doesn't faze Althea. She believes the best of her new husband and no one can speak a bad word about him in her presence. I won't ruin it completely, beyond saying, sometimes rumors have a basis in truth. I enjoyed the story written very vividly in Althea's point of view--with her rose-colored glasses on…until they're rudely knocked clean off her face. 

"Origin Story" by T. Kingfisher: This story was also included in the Jackalope Wives and Other Stories collection. In this disturbing tale, a fairy works in a charnel house, taking apart dead beasts and creating something new. Not surprisingly, the humans find her creepy. You'll need a strong stomach and solid backbone to get through this one. I would be surprised if you don't get a chill, as I did, at the end of the story. 

"History, Discovery, and the Quiet Heroics of Gardening" by Ursula Vernon: Those who have read a lot of this author's stories know she's an avid gardener and her experiences have made into to many, many of her fiction projects. I'm a new convert to gardening, so I was fascinated. Whether or not you have any personal interest in gardening, this essay will teach you something new. I've never thought about how heirloom vegetables may have come back from the edge of extinction because of the aggressive actions of a few fearless and utterly tenacious gardeners. Kingfisher says that this has influenced her writing, as she's found herself writing about unlikely heroes intent on saving one small but important thing. 

~*~

There's really no way to go wrong here. If you haven't previously read any of T. Kingfisher/Ursula Vernon's work, most everything included on this page would be a great introduction that won't cost you a penny. If you're a fan, you might find something here you haven't read before. In any case, I think you'll want to read more. This prolific author and extremely talented illustrator are well worth your time and money--I fully expect, as I have, you'll be happily willing to pay to read much more of her fine work. 

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website and blog here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/

The Hollow Places

Although I didn’t find this novel as mind-blowing as Kingfisher’s THE TWISTED ONES, it’s a captivating tale I've reread more than once. Like THE TWISTED ONES, it derives from a classic horror story, giving the source material Kingfisher's unique spin. THE HOLLOW PLACES combines a peculiar house with one of my favorite motifs, portal fantasy. Like the earlier novel, this one features a female first-person narrator with an irresistibly witty voice. But unlike the heroine of THE TWISTED ONES, who reluctantly returns to her late grandmother’s grim house to clear out mounds of hoarded junk, newly divorced Kara finds a welcome refuge in her eccentric uncle’s Glory to God Museum of Natural Wonders, Curiosities, and Taxidermy, where she often hung out while growing up. Although other people, including her ex-husband, might consider the bizarre collection creepy, she thinks of the displays, artifacts, and stuffed animals as old friends. She gladly accepts an invitation to live at the museum, in a back bedroom adorned by her favorite taxidermy piece, an elk’s head she named “Prince” in childhood. In return, she waits on tourists and begins the monumental project of creating a digital catalog of the collection.

Soon after the arrival of a box of miscellany that includes a “corpse-otter” carving from the Danube, her uncle is hospitalized, leaving Kara in charge on her own. Almost immediately, she discovers a hole in a wall, which turns out to be much more than it initially appears. At first assuming a visitor did the damage and left without mentioning it, Kara enlists Simon, who works at the coffee shop next door, to help with the repair. Simon is one of Kingfisher's typical quirky secondary characters, a middle-aged, gay man who proves to be a brave and loyal friend, sticking to Kara throughout the harrowing adventure that follows. Probing behind the wall, they find more space than the building could reasonably hold. They soon run out of plausible explanations for the anomaly and come upon a mysterious door.

It leads to a realm of water and fog, dotted with small islands overgrown by willow trees. Each one, it turns out, probably harbors a portal to a different realm, like the Wood Between the Worlds in C. S. Lewis’s THE MAGICIAN’S NEPHEW. The comparison doesn’t escape Kara, who eventually begins to think of the place as an anti-Narnia. Though eerie and desolate, the landscape doesn’t seem outright scary at first. Exploring it, however, Kara and Simon stumble upon horrors both human and inhuman. Graffiti that warn “They can hear you thinking” and “Pray They are hungry” are just the beginning. An encounter with a trapped explorer from another world is particularly gruesome. They manage to escape and get home, just barely, but Kara soon learns that walling up the hole doesn’t end the danger. The final revelation of what caused the crack between dimensions came as a surprise to me, poignant as well as terrifying, and it pulls together all the baffling elements of the story. My first thought when Kara and Simon entered the fog-shrouded island landscape was of Algernon Blackwood’s “The Willows.” Sure enough, the concluding Author’s Note reveals that she was inspired by Blackwood’s classic story. This novel is a can’t-miss read for fans of numinous horror with a subtly Lovecraftian feel.

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

The Twisted Ones

I consider THE TWISTED ONES, by T. Kingfisher, the best horror novel I’ve read in many years and possibly the only one I’ve found really scary since the original publication of PET SEMATARY. While Karen was unimpressed by it, for me it was the book that turned me on to Kingfisher's work, making her one of my favorite authors. The narrator, Melissa, nicknamed Mouse, receives a call from her elderly father about clearing out his recently deceased mother’s house. The house has been locked and uninhabited for the past two years, since his mother went into a home for the aged. He warns Mouse the place could be “bad,” but she accepts the task, since there’s nobody else to do it. If it turns out to be too much for her, he assures her he’d be okay with having the house razed instead of sold. Even with only vague hints from the blurb about the prospective horrors, I was captivated by this beginning. Mouse’s narrative voice makes the most mundane decisions and chores interesting. She grabbed me on page two with this description of her job, especially since I worked as a proofreader/editor for many years: “I’m a freelance editor. I turn decent books into decently readable books and hopeless books into hopeless books with better grammar.”

She and her rescue hound, Bongo, dutifully head for her grandmother’s house in rural North Carolina. Her grandmother was a hateful person who turns out also to have been a hoarder. “Bad” doesn’t begin to describe the house. At least, however, there’s no rotting food inside, and the water, electricity, and stove work. Mouse finds one bedroom untouched by the piles of accumulated junk (including a room stuffed with creepy dolls). It had belonged to her step-grandfather, Frederick Cotgrave, an immigrant from Wales whom she recalls only as a colorless, silent man constantly browbeaten by his wife. She does have one fond memory of his teaching her to draw the “Kilroy” cartoon popular in World War II, which becomes vitally important later in the story. She finds a journal written by Cotgrave and later a hidden manuscript referenced in the journal. At first she thinks the weird experiences he narrated prove the old man suffered from dementia and paranoia. On the other hand, the petty persecution he mentioned would have been totally in character for her grandmother.

What about the things Cotgrave claimed to have seen in the woods? When Mouse and her dog come across a strange cluster of stones with grotesque carvings on them, in a spot that should not exist in the local geography, she begins to suspect Cotgrave wasn’t losing his mind after all. By the time she discovers his hidden manuscript, she’s inclined to believe the dark things it hints at. It reconstructs as much as he could recall of another journal, the “Green Book,” written by a young girl who’d had sinister encounters with what she called the “white people.” Are the horrors that nineteenth-century girl witnessed being duplicated in North Carolina? Do similar things lurk in secret places all over the world? In the midst of her struggle with the house, Mouse glimpses what appear to be effigies made of sticks, bones, and miscellaneous debris topped by deer skulls. Moreover, she reluctantly entertains the possibility that they are animated. She makes friends with three middle-aged “hippies” on a nearby property, and they acknowledge that all the locals know there are vague but dangerous “things” in the woods.

I can’t be more specific because I don’t want to give away spoilers. As the plot accelerates, unexpected, terrifying events come at every turn. Yet even in the tensest moments, Mouse’s narrative interjects wry humor. (Unlike Karen, I don't feel this feature undercuts the horror. This aspect of Kingfisher's style is one of my favorite elements in all her books.) Mouse labors on the house to a background of the local NPR station’s Pledge Break week, another detail that pays off in the end. This novel includes an abundance of my favorite horror trope, the unearthing of dark secrets from the past. It was also a thrill to recognize this story as essentially a sequel to Arthur Machen’s classic story “The White People,” as the author explains in her afterword. She, of course, puts a different spin on his plot elements. The dog, Bongo, is a character in his own right but not unrealistically sapient. As Mouse frequently notes, he’s as dumb as a box of rocks aside from his almost preternatural tracking ability. Unlike too many horror-fiction characters, Mouse has sound motives for sticking around despite the frightful incidents and, later, for venturing deeper into the forest. Another feature of the novel I admire is that she has a credible reason for writing down her experience -- to sort out the traumatic events in her own mind -- and that, unlike some horror protagonists, she doesn’t blithely move on with her life unscathed after escaping the monsters. Furthermore, Cotgrave’s manuscript sounds believably uncertain at points, not (as Kingfisher discusses in the afterword) as if he had a photographic memory. I’ve rambled on long enough, so I can only urge horror fans to read this fantastic -- in both senses -- story.

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

Oldies But Goodies {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Reviews: Three Fantasy Horror Selections by T. Kingfisher by Karen S. Wiesner

 

Oldies But Goodies

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Reviews: Three Fantasy Horror Selections by T. Kingfisher

by Karen S. Wiesner 

Beware potential spoilers! 

I read a tremendous amount of T. Kingfisher (who also writes and illustrates under her real name Ursula Vernon) books in 2025, and I've been reviewing them for my Friday column here on the blog for much of that time. Because there are so many, I've been trying to do combined evaluations of her works according to series, genre, and/or theme. This week, I'm grouping three of her stories under the category of adult fantasy horror. 

Before I start, I have to lament about the fact that library apps tend to be insufficient when it comes to following prolific authors. I have two different library apps (Libby and Hoopla) and cards from two different physical libraries, yet I find that, even with all of that, I can't get everything I'd like in order to read/listen to everything by Ursula Vernon and her alter ego T. Kingfisher. Libraries should really commit to an author--all or nothing. If I like something by an author, I want to read her entire body of work. I think most true readers feel the same. In the case of this particular author, I wasn't able to get everything via the library apps or at the actual locations themselves. I ended up purchasing new trade paperbacks of each because I couldn't get them from the library. Of Kingfisher's body of work, these are probably my least favorites. Sigh! 

After reading so many of her eclectic selections, I've deduced that this author is uniquely her own--whether she's writing adult or kids' fiction, whatever the genre she writes in. She has her own style that flouts all conventional definition, and these are no exception. I like that, but it can also be an issue when you're reading a lot of her titles at once. In some ways, it's like the fact that Julia Roberts is always Julia Roberts in all her films. As an actress, her own personality bleeds into her work so it leads to her being typecast. She's tried to get out of that by doing different genres, including several unflattering roles, but the end result, unfortunately, is that Julia Roberts is always Julia Roberts. If you like her and think she's a great actress, as I do, then that's fantastic for you and her. If you don't, then probably not so much. In the same way, T. Kingfisher/Ursula Vernon seems to me to be, basically, the main character in anything she writes. Most of the time, that works for her; rarely, it doesn't quite make it. 

Note that I'm reviewing these selections in the order I read them, not the order they were published in.  

The Hollow Places is an adult fantasy horror novel published in 2020. Kara is the main character. Newly divorced, she's invited by her uncle to live at his unusual museum featuring weird "natural wonders" while she gets her bearings. While she's there, wanting to keep busy and avoid the melancholy of her situation, she stumbles upon a mysterious portal. She and her old friend Simon from next door enter it and become trapped in a nightmare, alternate universe. 

By all definitions, this one sounds like everything I'd love in a book. Yet I didn't. The protagonist and her companion didn't seem as well fleshed out as the characters in the previous stories I'd read of this author's. Additionally, it reminded me a lot of Alice in Wonderland and Gaiman's Nevermore, both of which I want to love but ultimately just don't. Too many insane events take place in stories like these, and, in my opinion, simply don't form a cohesive whole that I can connect with. It all just strikes me as random, unappealing crazy- or silliness. For fans of Wonderland and Nevermore, I imagine this one could be an amazing, upside-down adventure. 

A House With Good Bones (clever title) is an adult horror novel with a touch of modern gothic thrown into it. It was published in 2023. The heroine Sam takes an extended vacation from work as an archaeoentomologist (she studies insects and arthropods recovered from archaeological sites) because her brother is worried about their mother. Sam quickly realizes he was right to be concerned. Her mother seems different. While investigating why, sometimes with the help of her mother's handyman, Sam stumbles onto a lot of family secrets and peculiarities within the house and outside, in the rose garden. As usual in these kinds of stories, sometimes it's better to leave the past buried. After all, curiosity always tries to kill the cat. 

I expended tremendous effort trying to get into this story. I read a plodding chapter, took a break for a few weeks, read another slow chapter, went on to something else for a very long while. At that point, I knew I was going to have to buckle down and work really hard to force myself to read it. I'd purchased the trade paperback, brand new, so I didn't want it to be for nothing. 

There were a lot of interesting parts to the story. Sam is a well-constructed character with Kingfisher's typical big personality chock full of unique humor. My problem with all of Ursula Vernon/T. Kingfisher's work is that her main characters are constantly uttering little "asides" in introspection that can take over so they're no longer amusing injections but annoying blockades to plot development. There are so many of them, it became like I was reading someone's stream of consciousness journals! Each one is a detour from the main story, and that can get boring and overwhelming when trying to get into a particular story. 

Combine that problem with the fact that this story was such a slow burner. Having read The Hollow Places first, I got an inkling of where the faults in this particular genre were for the author, but here I was really slapped in the face. My crux issue is that the author seems to have a problem developing horror. Every time things got scary, it was as if she herself jumped onto the page and jarred us out of the story with off-putting and off-piste commentary that detracted from the action. It really broke up the tension and left me deflated and disappointed. I read horror because I want to be scared out of my pants. I want to chew my nails. Why would an author pop that balloon of rising terror when it's the whole purpose? 

As contradictory as this is going to sound, I did end up liking A House With Good Bones. You know, despite itself. It was an unusual story with creepy roses and bugs and a compelling twist on the obvious villain. In general, I liked the main character, but the over-excess of personality did get overwhelming sometimes. I wish it hadn't been so hard to get into, such a challenge to make it all the way through. But I was glad to have read it despite its slow and uneven pacing and the author self-sabotaging when it came to developing the horror. If you can stick with it, as I forcefully did, I think you'll be glad you did. 

The Twisted Ones is an adult horror novel published in 2019. While between editing jobs, Melissa, aka Mouse, accompanied by her loyal, sweet but dopey coon dog Bongo, ends up clearing out her so-not-beloved grandmother's house crammed with everything imaginable hoarded over the course of a lifetime. Early on, she finds her step-grandfather's journal and begins to be pulled into the crazy world he lived in in his final years. Local folklore combined with the old man's rantings about incoherent dreams of the woods and its bizarre, creepy creatures mingled with her own intrigue with the journal could lead her down a path there can be no return from. The local neighbors are certainly colorful and full of not-quite helpful information and support.

As in the previous two stories, we have what I believe is T. Kingfisher's fictional counterpart playing the starring role with the specific details like job, friends, and names, etc. being slightly changed up. Again, we have a male "protector" who doesn't quite live up to the role of hero, doesn't become a love interest, doesn't actually feel all that necessary to the story one way or the other. Instead, a new friend takes on the role--foolishly and unbelievably--of accompanying the heroine when she has to go against all sense and reason to confront the evil stalking her. Once more, there are way too many asides distracting from the plot, and the author defuses all the tension every single time before it really comes to a head. 

It was so hard to get into the story in the first place, and sticking with it was a daily struggle. The Twisted Ones wanted to be scary but it wasn't. Instead, it was just weird--probably as weird as her inspiration for it (mentioned in the Author's Note), apparently an Arthur Machen found manuscript called "The White People" that was published in 1904. I haven't even heard of it. While I'm glad I finished it because the core story was worthy, I didn't love the execution of this tale any more than I did the previous two. 

I hate to say something like this, but these three books seemed disturbingly similar as I read them. It was almost as if they were one book and the author just swapped out miscellaneous technicalities to make them slightly different. A House With Good Bones and The Twisted Ones, in particular, felt way too much alike. At least initially, the "Scooby Doo" lovable dog made this one much easier to read because at least the main character wasn't just talking to herself. Now she was directing her nervous tension onto her pet, which made everything a lot more palatable. I also wasn't a huge fan of the "past story told in journal entries" plot advancement. I won't lie to you--those were extremely hard to get through. In my opinion, it was a lazy way to tell the backstory, almost like those cabbagehead-isms from Star Trek, where characters are wont to say, "As you know…" before launching into important information about the plot that the viewer needs to know. 

~*~

I was looking for pee-my-pants chills from these three books, but I got novelty weirdness instead. Alas, I expect a lot of readers who like freaky, strange tales rather than true horror might like these three vastly more than I did. In general, I'd say the core narrative of each was good and pushing through to get to it was, at minimum, rewarding. 

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website and blog here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog and her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/

Paladin's Grace

As Karen explained in her review of the Saint of Steel series several weeks ago, that deity suddenly and inexplicably died, leaving his paladins with a void in their souls. As berserkers, often possessed by the god in combat, they’re now at risk of being overcome by the “black tide” of battle madness with no divine force to channel it. Those who survived this catastrophe now live as best they can under the patronage of the White Rat God, whose domains are healing and law. The series takes place in the same world as the Clocktaur duology and SWORDHEART, and Zale, a legal advocate who plays a major role in the latter novel, also appears in PALADIN’S GRACE.

Paladin Stephen more or less accidentally rescues Grace, a gifted perfume-maker. They feel an instant mutual attraction, which both resist, Stephen because of the unpredictable battle madness and Grace because of experiences with the emotionally abusive husband from whom she fled. Incidentally, their respective motives for reluctance to get involved seem plausible to me. Anyway, what kind of romance plot would we have if the course of true love ran smoothly from the first meeting? Nevertheless, as readers would expect, their paths keep crossing. Grace receives a commission to create a perfume for a foreign prince, a job that gets her unwillingly entangled in the hazards of court politics. By the time she falls under suspicion of poisoning and witchcraft, she and Stephen are so deeply involved that he risks everything to save her. The Temple of the White Rat comes to their aid, as, in a more subtle and problematic way, does Grace’s landlady and best friend, who turns out to be a professional spy.

In addition to the devotees of the White Rat (of whom I can never get enough), these books include an entertaining nonhuman species, gnoles, three-foot-tall, badger-like humanoids who perform a variety of jobs. One of their common sayings, “Humans can’t smell,” encapsulates their perception that most humans are so oblivious we can hardly be blamed for our ignorance. The gnoles’ own language applies gender pronouns according to class rather than biological sex. In the human tongue, though, they hardly ever use pronouns or proper names at all (except when being unusually formal and precise). A gnole refers to itself in the third person as “a gnole,” other creatures as “a human,” “an ox,” etc.

The author’s afterword states that she wanted to write a fluffy fantasy romance in the world of SWORDHEART and the Clocktaur duology. By the time she finished, she realized fluffy romances don’t usually contain so many severed heads. Subsequent Saint of Steel books feature some of Stephen’s comrades in their own love stories. In PALADIN’S STRENGTH, the love interest is a bear-shapeshifter lay sister of the Order of St. Ursa on a mission to rescue a group of kidnapped werebear nuns. In PALADIN’S HOPE, it’s a lich-doctor, this society’s equivalent of a medical examiner, who has the secret ability to view the final moments of any dead person or animal he touches. The fourth novel in the series, PALADIN'S FAITH, foregrounds Grace's undercover-agent landlady, Marguerite. All these novels display Kingfisher’s irresistible wit and sparkling characterization.

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

Oldies But Goodies {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: The World of the White Rat with Swordheart and The Clocktaur War by T. Kingfisher, Part 2 by Karen S. Wiesner

 

Oldies But Goodies

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: The World of the White Rat with Swordheart and The Clocktaur War by T. Kingfisher, Part 2

by Karen S. Wiesner 

Beware potential spoilers! 

Last week I reviewed T. Kingfisher's novel Swordheart, a medieval fantasy in The World of the White Rat (sometimes called The Temple of the White Rat). This umbrella series includes The Saint of Steel series, which I reviewed not long ago on the Alien Romances Blog, as well as Clocktaur War. This week I'll review the two books in the Clocktaur War.

I purchased ebook copies of the two Clocktaur War stories, steampunk fantasy romance novels. Yet again (sigh!), I think I read every part of this series out of order. On her website, the author suggests that the best order to read these interconnected books is the same as the publication order, namely:

Clocktaur War

Clockwork Boys, Book 1 (November 2017)

The Wonder Engine, Book 2 (July 2018)

Swordheart

Swordheart, Book 1 (November 2018)

Daggerbound, Book 2 (to be released in August 2026, and this one may actually take place later--after The Saint of Steel books; we'll have to see)

The Saint of Steel

Paladin's Grace, Book 1 (February 2020)

Paladin's Strength, Book 2 (February 2021)

Paladin's Hope, Book 3 (October 2021)

Paladin's Faith, Book 4 (December 2023)

In Swordheart, Jorge relates this to Halla and the advocate divine Zale from the Order of the White Rat: "It's been a mess. Since the Clockwork Boys got turned off, all the demons that were running the damn things jumped…well, you know. Five years and we're still cleaning up the mess." That puts something of a timeline on all this. I assume based on this that the Clocktaur War titles took place five years before Swordheart. It's not clear how long after Swordheart the Saint of Steel books take place, however, in my review of that series, specifically for Paladin's Hope, Galen talks about how he'd had some experience with "wonder" (mechanical and magical) doors and machines. At that time, I speculated about whether the two stories in the Clocktaur War told this story Galen references. The answer is, yes, in part at least. The mess with the Clockwork Boys being deactivated and demons taking over everything is the story told in Clocktaur War. However, Galen himself wasn't necessarily involved in the direct events taking place in the Clocktaur War books. His order, the paladins of the Saint of Steel, probably assisted The Dreaming God religious order paladins in "cleaning up" the demons that got loose in the Clocktaur War, but that particular tale is told offstage of any of the books in this world.

Clockwork Boys, Book 1, is little more than a (230-page) introduction to the actual story. Here, the plot of the Dowager of the capital realm wanting to figure out who's sending Clockwork Boys from a rival kingdom to wage war against her is set up. Clockwork Boys are unstoppable, centaur-like, living though mechanical soldiers that have four to six legs, are eight to ten feet tall and covered with gears. Her desperate, last-ditch attempt to put a stop this is to have a master forger and thief who's a descendent of a minor wonder worker (Slate, the only female in the band) assemble a team for a final suicide mission. The Dowager had previously sent two proper teams with military and artificers but none have returned alive, nor stopped the devastation. Already in place is assassin-for-hire (Brenner) who was Slate's lover a few years ago. The second one recruited (comprising the opening chapters of Clockwork Boys) is a disgraced and disillusioned paladin named Caliban, who's considered a traitor by his temple and been imprisoned because he became infected with the demon he was trying to exorcise for The Dreaming God. He ended up killing a lot of people during his possession. Learned Edmund, initially a misogynist, teenage dedicate for the Many-Faced God, rounds out the group when he volunteers to accompany them. He's made the study of arcane machinery his specialty.

While none of the criminals that encompass the group anticipate making it out of this situation alive, they have a very good reason for wanting to. Their motivation continues to develop as they begin to bond and Slate and Caliban complicate things by falling in love with each other. They've been promised pardons and generous rewards for their crimes if they succeed where others have failed. There are also consequences (in the form of a carnivorous tattoo that will eat them alive) if they try to bolt prematurely.

Getting to Anuket City is just the first hurdle, but naturally the war-torn cities and no-man's land between there and the capitol are being ravaged by Clockwork Boys and cause the band of criminals no end of trouble. They find a wonder-engine along the way--a device created by an ancient artificer (in this series, this amounts to a magical inventor) and this reaffirms that someone must have activated a wonder-engine to create the Clockwork Boys in such scores.

Both books in this duology are one story, but, as that would have made it a very large volume indeed (Book 2 has 360 pages), it was split in two, the first ending on a cliffhanger before the group arrives in Anuket City. If both books hadn't been available at the time I was reading them long years after their initial release, I would have been so annoyed. A cliffhanger shouldn't be a legitimate way to end any book in an overarching series if all the volumes aren't available to be read at the same time or nearly so. A month apart is forgivable, but not much more than that. In my mind, any significant gap between interconnected books is cruel and permissible grounds for abandoning the series, as I surely would have if I'd had to wait nearly a year to get my hands on Book 2 the way the readers of the first published edition of Clockwork Boys had to. Okay, so I wouldn't have abandoned the series. It's just too good. 

Within the first tale is where the group of misfits begins to learn about and tentatively trust one another, discovering individual secrets and conflicts, and becoming committed to each other as well as their cause. A gnole named Grimehug (who's been captured by a demon-possessed herd of runes) joins their company once they escape and he helps them. Anuket City has been pervaded by countless gnoles trying to rebuild their lives and culture beside humans who tolerate, basically ignore, but also oppress them. I love the complicated and colorful gnoles! What a cheerful addition to this medieval fantasy world.

In The Wonder Engine, Book 2, the story continues right where it left off in Book 1 with the band now inside Anuket City and on the lookout for Learned Edmund's counterpart there-- Brother Amandai, who's disappeared. The two had corresponded prior to that, and Learned Edmund's knows the scholar kept detailed notes about the wonder-engines he encountered. Learned Edmund has also secured the help of a master artificer, Ashes Magnus, who adds more comic relief and vigor to the story.

The romance, as usual for Kingfisher, was mostly annoying between Slate and Caliban because, like angsty teenagers, they just kept telling themselves they couldn't be together (I didn't find their reasons for refraining legitimate, let alone persuasive)…until they finally got it over with and just did it. Up until the end of the story, when the romance becomes more authentic and compelling, the basis for their relationship seemed to be built on Slate thinking Caliban was pretty and doable, while Caliban seemed to need to replace the god that abandoned him with someone to worship and follow. Slate wasn't the type of girl who expected poetry and roses, and she was uber-sensitive about being treated like a frail girly-girl. In her past relationship with Brenner, they both took what they wanted from each other--nothing more and nothing less. They understood how the game was played in that regard. In contrast, Caliban is a knight by profession, and he's something of a prude about sex because of his innate chivalry. T. Kingfisher is known for marvelous humor in her stories, both in the interactions between the story people and in the character dialogue and introspection. Instead of this silly angsting she falls back on like she doesn't really know any other way to develop a valid romance relationship, I wish she'd made the in-your-face sexual tension something that Slate and Caliban bantered about with each other and within their team until the bond grew between them honestly and cohesively. While the trope of a romance triangle is clichéd to death, I felt there was enough intrigue in this one, considering the late-developing curveball, to warrant and make it fresh. The events in the wrap-up chapters did manage to pull off a satisfactory romantic conclusion, which I was grateful for.

The steampunk "horror" in this fantasy novel was some of the best I've ever read in what I consider an otherwise hit-and-miss subgenre of science fiction incorporating industrial steam-powered technology. I really enjoyed every aspect of that and the tension as our merry band of broken villain-turned-heroes figure out how to take down terrifying magical siege machines. The group dynamics and all their built-in internal conflicts meshed wonderfully and were fully fleshed out. This is a solid strength evident in nearly every story I've read by this author. I also adore her medieval worlds, and this one has become a particular favorite. The twist at the end was well-worth even the eye-rolling angsting Slate and Caliban elicited from me for most of the two books.

Ultimately, I was pleasantly surprised by the story told in Clocktaur War. I was anticipating a kind of young adult weird steampunk thing I probably wouldn't enjoy. Instead I was treated to an adult (but still mostly a clean romance), high-stakes, fun, steampunk medieval fantasy with lawbreakers that stole my heart after I realized they were honorable, despite their crimes. The mix of well-developed characters that played off each other's strengths and weaknesses was flawless. Clocktaur War kind of reminded me of the Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves movie, but I believe this one would make an even better film, if someone wisely chose to undertake it.

The author apparently spent a decade writing these two books, and, in her author's note, she said she intended to write Learned Edmund's adventures--with Slate and Caliban (and hopefully Grimehug) dropping in. We'll see what the future holds, but as it's been eight years since the publication of The Wonder Engine, she may be too far away from the series to feel capable of revisiting it.

~*~

As I said about The Saint of Steel series in a previous review, if you're looking for something unusual and unconventional in your reading, written as if the author actually lived in medieval times, these books that make up The World of the Rat umbrella series could be right up your alley, as they definitely are mine. Darn, now I wish I'd bought paperbacks of Clocktaur War instead of too-easily-lost ebooks.

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website and blog here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog and her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/

Swordheart

For me, one outstanding feature of T. Kingfisher’s fiction consists of her protagonists’ irresistibly distinctive voices. Halla, heroine of SWORDHEART, is no exception, although this book (unlike the horror novels) is narrated in third person rather than first. A widow in her thirties, she has just inherited the estate of her husband’s great-uncle, for whom she has kept house since her husband’s death. Her great-uncle by marriage, although stingy and eccentric, was always kind to her in his way. The postmortem gift of his house and fortune, however, proves far from a boon. Her in-laws, outraged at the bequest, want her to marry her unappealing cousin-in-law, Alver. Locked in her room, Halla rationally analyzes the pros and cons of either accepting that fate or killing herself with the only lethal instrument available to her, an ancient sword hanging on the bedroom wall. I love the pragmatic way she struggles with the logistics of stabbing herself.

When she manages to wrest the weapon out of its scabbard, a man appears from thin air. Long ago, Sarkis was cursed to become one with the sword, taking flesh when it’s drawn and vanishing when its wielder sheaths it. The total healing that occurs in the latter status (including the regrowth of amputated appendages) makes him immortal, a “gift” that he considers part of the curse. He has no clear idea of how many centuries he has existed in this condition because he spends the time “inside” the sword in a sort of suspended animation, barely conscious. The spell obligates him to serve the weapon’s wielder, who retains ownership of it until he or she dies or voluntarily gives it away. Therefore, Halla finds she has acquired an unkillable bodyguard. After he breaks her out of her makeshift prison, they decide to travel to the big city and enlist the help of an order of priests -- the Temple of the White Rat -- specializing in legal problems, among other practical matters.

On the way, it soon becomes clear that Halla’s trusting nature would get her into serious trouble without Sarkis’s protection. At their destination, the order assigns an advocate, Zale, to return home with Halla and bring a lawsuit to reclaim her rightful inheritance. Zale, a character with an entertainingly dry wit and a relentlessly calm, logical attitude, presents as nonbinary. The text doesn’t make a point of this fact; Zale is simply referred to without comment as “they.” In one of my favorite scenes, they and Halla devise a series of experiments to find out whether everything detached from Sarkis’s body vanishes when he dematerializes into the sword. (It does; he agrees to the urine experiment but draws the line at such tests as having a fingertip removed.) Naturally they stumble into obstacles and dangers along the way; that's how quest stories / road trips are expected to unfold. During the adventurous journey, as the reader would guess, Halla and Sarkis progress from constant annoyance with each other through respect and friendship to romantic attraction. Sarkis considers himself unworthy of love, quite aside from his magical link with the sword, because of the circumstances that led to the curse. Incidentally, their first love scene is one of my favorites, in not only Kingfisher's works but romances in general. It's so delightfully *practical.* And I'm crazy about fictional couples who actually *talk* about -- and during -- sex.

Gradually we learn fragments of his past. When he reveals the full truth to Halla, she reacts to the revelation with believable distress. Their reconciliation doesn’t come without effort, while the ultimate showdown with her in-laws looms, its result not a foregone conclusion. The heroes' triumph doesn't feel easy to me, considering the kidnapping of Zale and Halla, along with the theft of the sword by a treacherous character who'd appeared friendly. Even when those crises are overcome, how can Halla and a warrior who’s also a sword, sort of, find happiness? The dialogue constantly sparkles, even in the midst of problems that seem insoluble. Every stage along their quest kept me enthralled. Although their troubles eventually reach a satisfactory resolution, the epilogue contains a teaser for a potential sequel. That book, DAGGERBOUND, is scheduled for August 2026.

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

Oldies But Goodies {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: The World of the White Rat with Swordheart and The Clocktaur War by T. Kingfisher, Part 1 by Karen S. Wiesner

Oldies But Goodies

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: The World of the White Rat with Swordheart and The Clocktaur War by T. Kingfisher, Part 1

by Karen S. Wiesner 

Beware potential spoilers! 

T. Kingfisher's medieval fantasy The World of the White Rat (sometimes called The Temple of the White Rat) is an umbrella series that includes The Saint of Steel series, which I reviewed not long ago on the Alien Romances Blog, as well as Clocktaur War (with two books) and the novel Swordheart. 

 

I purchased the deluxe hardcover edition of Swordheart that came out in February 2025, a reissue of the November 2018 novel. The deluxe copy has gorgeous turquoise sprayed edges with a silvery turquoise foil stamp of a sword on the cover and custom decorated endpapers. This as-untraditional-as-it-gets medieval romance has been described as The Princess Bride meets bodyguard romance. Halla, a widow, inherits her dead husband's wealthy uncle's estate, but greedy relatives scheme to steal it from her. The great-aunt Malva locks her in her room until she agrees to marry her son, the clammy-handed Alver, a milquetoast mama's boy. Halla sees no other recourse but to kill herself--what she sees as her only means of escape. To that end, she pulls down the decorative sword that's been hanging on her bedroom wall for as long as she can remember. Probably to ensure her clothing doesn't get bloody, she undresses and prepares to run herself through, something she quickly discovers is easier said than done. When she finally comes up with a plan for how to do that, she unsheathes the weapon and a knight appears, promising to serve the wielder of the enchanted sword. You know, after he gets over the shock of seeing her buck naked. 

Sarkis is anything but a hero--gaining immortality and servitude as punishment for his crimes in life is how he came to be forged into the sword in the first place. But he agrees to help the curvaceous chatterbox any way he can--at first, at least, in large part because he has no choice but to obey the sword owner. After the two escape the estate, they begin a journey to the Temple of the White Rat, where Halla hopes to get legal help to stake a claim on her unexpected inheritance. 

This amusingly irreverent order worshipping a rat is made up of lawyers, healers, and other community service workers. Various followers of this temple played roles in the four books of The Saint of Steel, and I believe at least one Temple of the White Rat character from that series makes a reappearance here (but I'm not entirely certain**). Also, gnoles (a race of talking badgers that are a part of human society in this medieval world) are included in Swordheart. I think the gnole Brindle was in one or more of The Saint of Steel stories. Additionally, members of the Order of the Sainted Smith (specifically, the vaunted woman blessed by the Forged God with the skill to imprison Sarkis and his two companions), the Hanged Motherhood, and The Dreaming God religious order dedicated to slaying demons (all mentioned in The Saint of Steel) make appearances here in various degrees. The amorous paladin Jorge that Slate meets up with in the first book is one of three paladins for The Dreaming God, and he also appeared in Paladin's Faith. I love that kind of continuity in connected stories. 

**It's difficult to keep track of minutiae in such a vast network of main, secondary, and ancillary characters and world-building elements. Mixed up in this is the fact that every single book in The Saint of Steel as well as Swordheart is impossibly long and, in my opinion, bloated with unforgivable romantic apprehension which produces angst more suited to teenagers than adults between the romantic couple spotlighted in each volume as the individuals try to talk themselves out of falling in love with each other, and for no good reason. This distress is a massively disappointing substitute for true sexual tension and relationship development. Sadly, all of Kingfisher's romance-slanted stories I've (so far) read suffer from this malady, in my opinion. 

In any case, Halla and Sarkis' journey is long and fraught with never-ending hilarity at times bordering on (fortunately, mostly fun) ridiculousness, contradictory tender mawkishness sprinkled with shocking vulgarity (another common trait of Kingfisher's anti-romance stories), and plain good entertainment. A weird thing about this particular story is that there isn't a whole lot at stake, so there's little plot tension, and yet almost nothing seems to go right for either of the two main characters. These minor issues that crop up are in the foreground and develop because of character-inspired "clumsiness" (for lack of a better description). They aren't usually the main plots going around viable twisty turns. They're just random situations that crop up to thwart Halla and Sarkis's progress toward their goal. For example, they're robbed at one point because Hallas stupidly trusted some woman who asked for her help at an inn. The female turned out to be part of a gang of robbers. Minor problems like that happen more frequently in this story than, say, a plot element that goes off on a necessary bender. Instead, in Swordheart, legitimate plot developments tend to go smoothly, almost without a hitch. As a result, the external plot comes off as almost too easily resolved. 

Also, the stakes didn't feel quite high enough. The worst thing that could have happened at the end of Swordheart was that Halla would have a) gotten the inheritance and taken Sarkis as her life companion (best case scenario), b) been forced to marry a man she didn't care for (worst case scenario), or c) just fended for herself in the world without either man or the money (middling scenario). None of those options seemed particularly end-of-the-world in the spinning of this novel. 

While the lack of critical, escalating tension and high stakes didn't exactly make the story and its full-fleshed-out characters drastically less enjoyable, this aspect did make the novel a bit less memorable than it could have been with higher stakes and less easily resolved external conflict. 

I liked (didn't love) this low-key, off-the-cuff tale that included an okay romance that's mildly similar to Shrek, with a very unlikely pair cast as hero and heroine who, by all logical estimations can't possibly end up with a happily ever after but somehow do. I also loved dipping back into Kingfisher's well-constructed medieval world that feels like home now. 

In the note in the back of Swordheart, the author said she intended to write a trilogy that includes Sarkis's two companions in life, Angharad and Dervish. She also said she was already working on the sequel--Angharad's story specifically. However, on her website, when asked if there will be a sequel to Swordheart, she says, "I hope so. For some reason, the Dervish’s story just does not want to come out. I’ve tried everything short of an icepick. Hopefully it will unjam at some point. I’ve got about 15K on it, and it’s not dead, it’s just…slow." On Goodreads, it says Swordheart #2 (which I assume includes one of the two stories of Sarkis's mercenary companions who were bound into magic steel as punishment for their crimes), Daggerbound, is to be published in January 2026. On my Libby library app, I discovered an actual back cover blurb for the book, which tags Dervish as the main character in the book. There, it states the book will be released August 24, 2026. Who knows which is correct? The deluxe edition of Swordheart #1 is probably in preparation for the upcoming release of the sequel. I may review it if/when it's released, as well as any future follow-ups. Note: I'm unclear whether the author has finished Angharad's story that she claimed to be working on in the Swordheart author note, but it seems that the Dervish story may have unjammed itself and become #2 in the trilogy instead of #3.

Next week I'll continue this review with the two books in Clocktaur War. 

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website and blog here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog and her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/

Thornhedge

THORNHEDGE, by T. Kingfisher (reviewed by Karen in mid-December), is a unique, emotionally stirring re-vision of “Sleeping Beauty” from the viewpoint of the fairy who casts the sleep spell. I'm a big fan of fairy-tale retellings, especially those that offer fresh angles on familiar classics. THORNHEDGE flips the perspective on the original tale's malevolent antagonist and innocent victim. Suppose there’s a very good reason why the princess shouldn’t be allowed to wake up? The protagonist, Toadling, a were-toad (it makes sense in context), has spent countless years lurking outside the deserted keep within its nearly impenetrable barrier of thorns and brambles, guarding the magic that keeps the princess in suspended animation. Meanwhile, the outside world rolls on through catastrophic historical events, such as a devastating plague, of which Toadling knows nothing until a curious knight arrives on the scene.

At first she only wants him to go away, but loneliness and the intriguing novelty of having someone to talk with overcome her reluctance to interact with the stranger. We gradually learn her background and the truth of the princess in the tower in a series of flashbacks as Toadling reveals her story to the knight. Born human, daughter of a minor king and queen, she was snatched from her cradle and replaced by a changeling. Since the fairies’ sole purpose for this action is to place the changeling with an unwitting family, they usually abandon the human child. The protagonist was found by greenteeth, marsh-dwelling faerie creatures; instead of eating her, as they often do with children, they lovingly raised her as one of their own. Growing up more fay than human, she learned water magic and shapeshifting into a toad. Later, she got instruction in spellcasting to prepare her for her destined mission -- to save her real parents from impending danger. Time in faerie unfolds at a different speed from mortal time; in this case, many years pass in faerie during mere hours or days in the mundane world (the reverse of the more common lore). So Toadling arrives in the royal court on the day of her substitute’s christening. A slip of the tongue makes her prepared spell go disastrously wrong. She’s barred from faerie and stuck with watching over the little changeling princess.

Halim, a Muslim knight who’s far from distinguished or wealthy, has little or no interest in tourneys or fighting in general. Instead, he has an insatiable drive to investigate mysteries and an open-minded, compassionate nature. When Toadling gives up trying to drive him away, they become friends of a sort as he attempts to break her “curse” by every method he can think of. Once he accepts her insistence that she herself is not cursed, he decides to enter the keep and convinces her to help him. Maybe they can find a way to free Toadling from her centuries-long vigil and exile from her home. In Toadling and Halim, Kingfisher has created two more of her typically thoughtful, quick-witted characters who don’t fit into the patterns of the roles they would play in most traditional fantasies or fairy tales. Their dialogues are delightful and the bond that grows between them deeply moving in a quiet way. Kingfisher’s afterword labels this book a “sweet” story, and I agree. Though there’s no hint of a potential sequel, I’d love to read the further adventures of these characters. In my opinion, THORNHEDGE is practically perfect, except that it’s too short.

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt

Oldies But Goodies {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: The Saint of Steel Series by T. Kingfisher by Karen S. Wiesner

 

Oldies But Goodies

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: The Saint of Steel Series by T. Kingfisher

by Karen S. Wiesner

 

 

Beware potential spoilers! 

To describe T. Kingfisher's medieval fantasy The Saint of Steel series as romance is a bit off the mark. No doubt it has lateral shoots toward it but those tendrils into the genre are anything but conventional. The language and love scenes are unexpectedly crude, the way erotica can sometimes be, though all volumes frequently dip into the (frequently eye-rolling) tender mawkishness of traditional romance offerings. I suspect strongly that the author intended exactly this unorthodox straddling of categories when she was writing it. 

Whatever its classification, for the most part, I found it to be a breath of fresh air. Full disclosure: For all intents and purposes, I stopped reading romances (other than the young adult variety) about twenty years ago. I can't really say that was a conscious decision. More that I'd expanded past the romance-heavy books that dominated the reading of my twenties and early thirties. And, admittedly, I no longer cared for the requisite love scenes that were so much a part of this genre. I discovered another nice thing about audiobooks is that you can fast-forward past sections in 15-second intervals. I did that a lot with these. In any case, it was a bit strange for me to take up a romance series--unconventional as this was--again after all this time away. 

Once I'd finished with Kingfisher's audiobook of A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking (I reviewed it recently on this blog), the only available audiobooks by this author on my library app were these four books in The Saint of Steel series. Weirdly, all of them were available to check out there and then, so I was able to listen to them back-to-back. The fact that they were readily obtainable when none of her others were made me wonder if they weren't any good. Luckily, I found that wasn't the case. I also learned that when something is "DRM free", as I think this series is, it means that unlimited electronic copies are distributed. No waiting lines! Nice for readers, probably not so much for the author or publisher. 

The premise of this series is that an order of berserker paladins loses the Saint of Steel they serve when he dies. Unthinkably--to me anyway--in this fictional medieval time period the series is set in, these saints are venerated as gods; in fact, the words "saint" and "god" pretty much mean the same thing here. After his death, his followers go on a mad rampage of death before they're broken. That's covered in a short prologue in Book 1. Years later, the seven survivors have been taken into the service of the (irreverent but amusingly so) Temple of the Rat, made up of lawyers, healers, and other community service workers. Here, they can again do good. 

By nature, paladins are selfless, chivalrous, and honest to a fault. However, these knights are forever in danger of losing themselves to the berserker rage (called the black tide) they can't control once its unleashed. I loved how natural the world building in this medieval setting is in the author's hands. She does medieval effortlessly, as if she herself actually lives in that time period. 

There are four books in this series:

Paladin's Grace, Book 1 (2020)

Paladin's Strength, Book 2 (2021)

Paladin's Hope, Book 3 (2021)

Paladin's Faith, Book 4 (2023)

 

In Paladin's Grace, the knitting paladin Stephen is the focus. Grace is a perfumer he rescues one night and then the two become embroiled in a conspiracy plot against the crown prince as well as investigating necromantic serial killings in which the victim's heads are chopped off; black magic clay heads are then implanted into the corpses to make an army of monsters. 

This story had some clichéd romantic elements. Stephen was such a do-gooder he was always worrying about losing control whenever he and Grace found themselves in a compromising sexual situation. Frequently, that led to sex between them being tabled, which got a little stale after a while. Grace is also the victim of a philandering husband who made her believe she was frigid and so she spends a lot of wasted time pushing Stephen away on that premise. The first actual love scene was a little icky for me--as far from romantic as it gets. I wanted to shout, Please, close the door! I believe the author wrote it the way she did to avoid all potential for purple prose or swooning. She may have gone a little too far on that point. I learned after that to fast-forward to get past these excruciating scenes. That said, the rest of the romance and suspense plotlines were, at turns, fun, funny, sweet, and even heartwarming. The happily ever after between Stephen and Grace was, fittingly, out of the ordinary for a romance novel as well, in that the couple didn't have a picket fence and 2.5 kids in their future. They would both continue as they had been, only now they were together. I really liked that Grace's best friend Marguerite was a very avant garde character. The reader didn't know what she might do next. I also liked the introduction of a race of talking badgers that are a part of human society in this medieval world. 

Book 2 in the series, Paladin's Strength, takes up paladin Istvhan's (mentioned in Book 1) story. He's paired with Clara, a very large (nearly his own considerable size), capable woman who's a nun from a secretive order. Clara is hiding something shocking and intriguing that really adds something to the story. Her sisters have been kidnapped. She doesn't know why, but she intends to find out. Istvhan's company--that she originally thought was a band of mercenaries--helps her and, along the way, finds out that the necromantic serial killer from Book 1 is still on the loose. 

There's also a gnole in this story, as there was in Book 1 (I don't think it's the same one) who accompanies Istvhan's company. I loved this interesting, unexpected character. Additionally, we got to revisit Stephen and Grace's happily ever after, which was nice. I liked the main characters, their amusing repertoire, and the romance that seemed joyfully inevitable despite their circumstances. However, as in Paladin's Grace, the angst that Istvhan and Clara go through about whether they should be allowed to fall in love and have sex with each other gets really annoying with such a long book. Teenagers are less angsty than Kingfisher's couples in this series. At one point (64% into the 16-hour audiobook), Clara thinks to herself, What's wrong with me? I should have been riding this man until we both walk funny. That about sums it up. Just do it already! The author also has far too many albeit plausible (but still annoying) interruptions getting in the way of sex. The overwhelming build-up tends to make the actual event disappointing when it finally comes. I'm beginning to fear the entire series might suffer from this particular malady. 

In general, I enjoyed this story and its characters very much, though it was far too long. There were two external plotlines and both got the full treatment. While I think they were both well done, the book seemed nevertheless excruciatingly endless. The angst could have been blessedly cut and taken with it a good one or two hundred pages. 

The gay paladin, Galen, mentioned in Book 1 and having played a large role in Book 2, is in the spotlight in Paladin's Hope. In the first book, we learned that he's struggled more with survival after the Steel Saint's death than the others. His nightmares used to end in a berserker rage, but he's found that being on the road helps temper the bad dreams quite a bit. He now goes weeks or longer without having one. 

In this story, Galen is paired with a lich-doctor (a physician that works among the dead, determining causes of death for city investigations) named Piper. Piper has a useful, intriguing skill that aids him in his profession. He calls it "wonder working"--when he touches a dead body, he can see what happened the last few seconds of their life before death. When a tenacious and brave constable gnole decides there are too many mysterious bodies piling up, he enlists Piper and Galen's to help him find the source. That's the only suspense plotline in this book, and that made it a lot shorter to get through, which was nice. Unfortunately, Galen and Piper are just as tormented with worry as the previous couples, so fast-forward, fast-forward, fast-forward! 

Side note: The Saint of Steel series books are also associated with some of Kingfisher's other titles set in the same medieval fantasy world. The umbrella series is referred to as "The World of the White Rat" and includes The Saint of Steel as well as Clocktaur War (with two books) and the novel Swordheart. I intend to read all of those soon and maybe review them here. The reason I mention this is because, in this story, Galen talks about how he'd had some experience with "wonder" (mechanical and possibly magical) doors and machines. The two stories in the Clocktaur War may tell this story Galen references. I'll have to see. Early in Paladin's Hope, Galen, Piper and the gnole are forced behind a wonder door, into a labyrinth filled with deadly traps they'll have to get through to escape. 

In the course of the book, readers briefly get to see the happily-ever-afters of the two previous couples, which I enjoyed. I liked the fully-fleshed out characters and the new mystery plot in this tale that's nicely focused without too much expansion from that point. 

 

The final book in the series, Paladin's Faith, features Marguerite and paladin Shane, her bodyguard. She's trying to escape a former employer who's part of a powerful organization that wants her dead. Along the way, the couple have to dodge a demon-led cult that's out to get them. Additionally, Marguerite, Shane, and another paladin--a female named Wren--go undercover to hunt for an artificer who's crafted a device that could devastate the world. Also, though I never really thought about it before, the suspicious death of the Saint of Steel that all these paladins served is brought up in this book as yet another suspense angle. 

Again, this story was far too long and overburdened with subplots upon subplot. Combine this with yet another angsty romance between two people who spend far too much time telling themselves they can't anything with the other, and it's a surefire recipe for overload. Sigh. The female paladin Wren, who's like a sister to Shane, added an interesting viewpoint to this tale. Despite the negatives, I did enjoy the overall story, the compelling cast of characters, and the multi-faceted mysteries were capably handled from start to finish. 

Note that according to the author, though there are seven surviving paladins, these are the only four stories she intends to write (well, Wren is a paladin and a good chunk of her story was told in this last book, so perhaps we can say five stories were told within the four books, leaving potentially two untold), though further entries aren't out of the realm of possibility in the future. I expect Kingfisher didn't initially anticipate writing more than a trilogy with The Saint of Steel but Marguerite probably got a lot of requests for a story of her own. I for one would have felt disappointed without finding out what happened to her after Book 1. 

To sum up, if you're looking for something unusual and unconventional in your romance reading, this series is certainly worth your time. Beware the teenager apprehension you'll get around every corner between the couples, but, alas, that's what audiobooks and fast-forward buttons are for. 

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website and blog here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/