![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Paladin's Grace
Dec. 5th, 2025 03:39 pmThe Paladin series by T Kingfisher has been recommended to me a few times and I've been meaning to try more of T Kingfisher's books, so I thought I'd give the first one, Paladin's Grace, a try.
It's about a paladin named Stephen, whose god dies, so he's left somewhat at a lose end - with the risk of falling into a beserker rage hanging over him.
He meets Grace, a perfumer, and the attraction between them is pretty much instant.
There is some plot (someone is leaving severed heads lying around the city and there's an assassination attempt that both Stephen and Grace end up embroiled in) but the vast majority of the book is focused on their romance - and the way it was presented and developed over the course of the book really annoyed me!
It's incredibly repetitive - with each of them continually fantasising about the other, then berating themselves for being ridiculous or shameful, and assuming over and over again that the other one could never be interested in them. Ad nauseum. Even when things do progress between them, there's still an extended misunderstanding and more endless browbeating and self-loathing before things finally get resolved.
And it was just really, really irritating. I rolled my eyes so many times while reading this book, I'm surprised they didn't roll right out of my head!
Both plot strands were quite interesting, but neither got remotely enough page time to feel fully fleshed out - and then one was resolved through a massive coincidence and the other through a deus ex machina, so neither was very satisfying.
I did, however, absolutely love all the peripheral characters - the other paladins, Grace's friend and landlady, and especially the bishop of the White Rat.
So, while I can't say I really enjoyed this book all that much overall, I am actually planning to continue with the series, because each subsequent book follows different characters I really like, and I'm hoping the other romances will be handled differently and be more enjoyable.
It's about a paladin named Stephen, whose god dies, so he's left somewhat at a lose end - with the risk of falling into a beserker rage hanging over him.
He meets Grace, a perfumer, and the attraction between them is pretty much instant.
There is some plot (someone is leaving severed heads lying around the city and there's an assassination attempt that both Stephen and Grace end up embroiled in) but the vast majority of the book is focused on their romance - and the way it was presented and developed over the course of the book really annoyed me!
It's incredibly repetitive - with each of them continually fantasising about the other, then berating themselves for being ridiculous or shameful, and assuming over and over again that the other one could never be interested in them. Ad nauseum. Even when things do progress between them, there's still an extended misunderstanding and more endless browbeating and self-loathing before things finally get resolved.
And it was just really, really irritating. I rolled my eyes so many times while reading this book, I'm surprised they didn't roll right out of my head!
Both plot strands were quite interesting, but neither got remotely enough page time to feel fully fleshed out - and then one was resolved through a massive coincidence and the other through a deus ex machina, so neither was very satisfying.
I did, however, absolutely love all the peripheral characters - the other paladins, Grace's friend and landlady, and especially the bishop of the White Rat.
So, while I can't say I really enjoyed this book all that much overall, I am actually planning to continue with the series, because each subsequent book follows different characters I really like, and I'm hoping the other romances will be handled differently and be more enjoyable.
