Paladin’s Grace

Paladin’s Grace (2020) T. Kingfisher (The Saint of Steel)

Stephen was a paladin for the Saint of Steel until that god died, and all his paladins went mad.

The remaining seven paladins now serve the Rat, in gratitude for taking them in and giving them some purpose.

The Rat’s priests fixed things that could be fixed, and when things were broken past all mending, they helped people pick up the pieces.

But their god is still dead, and the berserker tide is still within them.

Grace is a perfume. She arrived in the city with nothing, and built up a business, and now she has been requested to create a perfume for the visiting prince.

Leather, metal, gingerbread. Soap. Warm skin. It had been a good scent. And there was just no way to reproduce it. You couldn’t distill skin.

Well, maybe you could, but the authorities would frown on it.

First and foremost, I adore Stephen.

He wished that he could break out his knitting, but for some reason, people didn’t take you seriously as a warrior when you were knitting. He’d never figured out why. Making socks required four or five double-ended bone needles.

Stephen and all the other paladins.

“Istvhan, you ever kill someone with an ice swan?” he whispered.

“I clubbed someone unconscious with a frozen goose once. That’s similar?”

The Bishop suffered a mysterious coughing fit.

“No, you had to use the goose as a bludgeon, didn’t you? For the swan, I figure you’d snap the head off and try to stab with the neck.”

“Hmmm…” Istvhan eyed the ice sculpture speculatively. “It’s pretty big. And not well balanced.”

“I figure you’d have to go two-handed with it.”

“I think I’d grab one of the candelabras instead. Some of those are nice and heavy.”

“Far too unwieldy. I could take you apart with the ice swan while you were still trying to get the candelabra off the ground.”

How could I not love that?

I adored the world building: the paladins, Beartongue the bishop, the perfumery, and the paladins.

Stephen sighed and took refuge in ritual. “Shrive me, brother, for my heart is heavy.”

There is a romance here, between Grace and Stephen, but I found that the least interesting part of the story.

I definitely wanted more time with the paladins. And Beartongue. And Zale, solicitor-sacrosanct from the Temple of the Rat.

Publisher : Red Wombat Studio
Rating: 8.5/10

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