michelel72 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
michelel72) wrote2021-11-24 09:57 am
michelel72) wrote2021-11-24 09:57 am
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Book: "Paladin's Hope", T. Kingfisher (Ursula Vernon)
This review is a bit hazy because I read this book within a day of its release to Patreon but never posted about it. This is one of Vernon's paladin romances; I've enjoyed the series and I enjoyed this installment.
(Aside: I don't enjoy horror, yet I enjoy most of Vernon's not-strictly-horror works; much is made of how gruesome her romances are, but they simply strike me as fantasy/murder-mystery/romance works and I am here for it. She recently mentioned that she simply isn't into grimdark, and I think that's the key for me. So many promising-seeming writers are all about the grim! the gritty! the bleak! the hopeless! the bitter reality! the mandatory body count! the no-true-happy-ending! the unapologetically terrible characters! and that's fine and all for them and their fans, but I am done with all that. I don't want tooth-rotting sweetness, but I need likeable characters and hope that things can end well. Vernon does get into more grim/bleak than I would typically seek out, but she mitigates it with humor and with endings that are more hopeful than not.)
ANYway. This one is M/M, and the setting doesn't treat that as some huge deal, which is refreshing. (Apparently there are internet reviews/comments complaining about sex on every single page, which is frankly hilarious except for the part where it's enraging; these trolls consider the mere existence of same-sex attraction to be explicit sex, while blatant opposite-sex lust sails right past them unnoticed. As an ace who finds explicit sex boring, I think I can say this book actually has less sex than the rest of the series.) To the extent I paid any attention to the explicit passages, they seemed less inventive and detailed than Vernon's het works, but don't quote me on that.
There is a formula to these books: angsty paladin feels undeserving of and/or dangerous to love interest, love interest has obstacles as well, mutual love is achieved over the course of fantasy-society adventures. Piper seemed less conflicted, damaged, self-doubting, or secret-bearing than the prior love interests, which was a pity to me because I enjoy seeing characters deal with that stuff. The social stuff is getting heavier, I think; the gnoll explorations were great, but there's a measure of "societies are just going to be brutally anti-other, even in fantasy" and "police-like systems are inherently corrupt and corrupting" that brought a measure of grim/bleak to the proceedings.
I did enjoy it, but not as much as prior entries in the series, even though I typically prefer reading slash relationships to reading het ones. I do appreciate how very different each entry's specific plot challenges are, though. The real draws are the worldbuilding and, in particular, Vernon's distinctive sense of humor.
The last line, in the epilogue, is a real punch, mostly because I don't know what it means for the character. It could be fine! It could be Very Bad! I may need to seek out some fanfic, since it sounds like we won't be getting more from this particular world for at least a year or two.
Ultimately, the formula is starting to feel a little constraining, and I liked the prior works a bit better, but I still liked this one. Recommended.
(Aside: I don't enjoy horror, yet I enjoy most of Vernon's not-strictly-horror works; much is made of how gruesome her romances are, but they simply strike me as fantasy/murder-mystery/romance works and I am here for it. She recently mentioned that she simply isn't into grimdark, and I think that's the key for me. So many promising-seeming writers are all about the grim! the gritty! the bleak! the hopeless! the bitter reality! the mandatory body count! the no-true-happy-ending! the unapologetically terrible characters! and that's fine and all for them and their fans, but I am done with all that. I don't want tooth-rotting sweetness, but I need likeable characters and hope that things can end well. Vernon does get into more grim/bleak than I would typically seek out, but she mitigates it with humor and with endings that are more hopeful than not.)
ANYway. This one is M/M, and the setting doesn't treat that as some huge deal, which is refreshing. (Apparently there are internet reviews/comments complaining about sex on every single page, which is frankly hilarious except for the part where it's enraging; these trolls consider the mere existence of same-sex attraction to be explicit sex, while blatant opposite-sex lust sails right past them unnoticed. As an ace who finds explicit sex boring, I think I can say this book actually has less sex than the rest of the series.) To the extent I paid any attention to the explicit passages, they seemed less inventive and detailed than Vernon's het works, but don't quote me on that.
There is a formula to these books: angsty paladin feels undeserving of and/or dangerous to love interest, love interest has obstacles as well, mutual love is achieved over the course of fantasy-society adventures. Piper seemed less conflicted, damaged, self-doubting, or secret-bearing than the prior love interests, which was a pity to me because I enjoy seeing characters deal with that stuff. The social stuff is getting heavier, I think; the gnoll explorations were great, but there's a measure of "societies are just going to be brutally anti-other, even in fantasy" and "police-like systems are inherently corrupt and corrupting" that brought a measure of grim/bleak to the proceedings.
I did enjoy it, but not as much as prior entries in the series, even though I typically prefer reading slash relationships to reading het ones. I do appreciate how very different each entry's specific plot challenges are, though. The real draws are the worldbuilding and, in particular, Vernon's distinctive sense of humor.
The last line, in the epilogue, is a real punch, mostly because I don't know what it means for the character. It could be fine! It could be Very Bad! I may need to seek out some fanfic, since it sounds like we won't be getting more from this particular world for at least a year or two.
Ultimately, the formula is starting to feel a little constraining, and I liked the prior works a bit better, but I still liked this one. Recommended.