Paladin's Strength by T. KingfisherMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
I don't give five stars often or lightly, but it's hard to think of how you'd improve on this.
T. Kingfisher may or may not have invented the subgenre of "awkward romance between damaged middle-aged people in a world of swords and sorcery," but she is certainly the chief exponent of it. As always, the couple are delightful both individually and together; the berserker paladin of a dead god, with all of the grief and guilt and general pain that implies, and the lay sister of an order of nuns with a secret, the sole one of her sisters still at large after they were kidnapped en masse. The secret is kind of spoiled a little on the cover, but I'll spoiler-tag it: (view spoiler). Both of the protagonists have been through a lot (not least because they're middle-aged and so have had time to go through a lot), and it makes them emotionally defended, which is why, even though they're attracted to each other, they hold off from doing anything about it for a really long time. As tends to be the case with T. Kingfisher, they both think the other one couldn't possibly want them because of reasons, and hesitate to commit because if it didn't last (and how could it last?) that would be more pain than they were up for, and also they both have missions (he's tracking undead golems, she's trying to find her sisters and, if possible, free them), so romance wouldn't be appropriate anyway, but he/she really is tremendously attractive... It makes for a plot with a lot of emotional ups and downs, which is great.
Also, even though this is part of a series of awkward romances between damaged middle-aged people in a world of swords and sorcery, it's not just the other books over again with different names and a bit of a paint job. The characters are distinct and different from the characters in the other books I've read, and their relationship complications are fresh ones. It hits that sweet spot of being similar to those other books I enjoyed, without falling into the trap of being indistinguishable from them.
The other thing is, T. Kingfisher is funny. This isn't billed as "comic fantasy" (a genre that frequently disappoints by its shallow buffoonery), but there were multiple occasions when I snorted with laughter at some piece of beautifully phrased dialog or ridiculous situation. Kingfisher isn't afraid to have serious things, like love and guilt and important missions and conflict, also be absurd from time to time, which is a great relief from the grim-faced epic fantasy that I now avoid. Any middle-aged person who's in, or has been in, a relationship knows that sex is awkward and ridiculous, and the book is the stronger for acknowledging that and building it into the rich tapestry of the couple's relationship.
In terms of copy editing, there's the occasional typo, a misplaced apostrophe with a plural possessive (apparently a weakness of this author, since I've seen it before in her books), and one word used incorrectly: "catechism," which means a series of questions and answers intended to educate about the doctrine of the faith, but is being used here to mean a set prayer. I strongly suspect "liturgy" is the word the author was looking for. Compared to most books I read, that counts as clean enough to eat off.
I've read a few reviews of the third book that suggest I might not enjoy it as much, but the fourth is now out, and my library has it, so I'm looking forward to reading that one too. They're self-contained, even though they do refer to events in earlier books, so skipping one shouldn't be a problem.
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