Review by itsnotalakeitsanocean - Paladin's Strength

itsnotalakeitsanocean 's review for:

Paladin's Strength by T. Kingfisher

2.75

adventurous dark mysterious medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

First of all, I feel absolutely awful giving this book 2.75 stars when it had a lot of things I liked about it (see below). Unfortunately there were two major factors which made me rate this book so low:

A lot of the good stuff either appeared towards the beginning before disappearing, or was backloaded to 2/3 of the book, meaning that for a good chunk of the book everyone was farting around riding on wagons in the most boring way possible. I think if they had reached Morstone sooner and had to spend more time finding help in the city, it would have benefitted the pacing and worldbuilding better.
As much as I prefer Istvhan and Clara having a more involved relationship compared to the MCs in the last book, Istvhan feels really boring compared to Clara. Also I would have thought there would have been more rammifications in plot to him and Beartongue breaking up apart from a cheeky aside by Galen.

And so I kind of ended up skimming the book towards the end even though that was where the good stuff was because it was a slog to get there. As for the things I liked:

I love Clara so much, and I wish we had more mainstream protags like her (especially plus sized women and women that are less gender conforming.
I put the book down to applause the first time she turned into a bear, seeing as how I have a soft spot for bears and werebears.
I liked the variety of side characters, which really helped to flesh out the world. My only complaint is I wish the rabbits came back in some fashion, or perhaps that there were different warrens that had relationships with other warrens.
The horror elements were good as usual for Kingfisher (though I question why anyone would call this "cozy" fantasy when there are gruesome elements like this)

Some small rambles (mostly things I didn't like/were wasted potential):

So partway through, there's a few paragraphs about a plague that went around called Werkblight, which everyone was able to come together and get rid of it (i.e. this fantasy world had its own version of covid, reflecting when Kingfisher started writing this series). This would be fine if not for the fact this paragraph is skippable and nothing of value is lost. Surely there would still be measures that society has taken to stop the spread of Werkblight that are still in use even after it vanishes? Were there any places that refused to come together with everyone else and put a stop to it? Were there any groups of people taking advantage and scamming people with snake oil to cure it (and snake oil is mentioned in the book, so it's not like there isn't a precedence for this kind of thing!)
Great gouts of steaming magma on a beeline for the orphanage, can we PLEASE stop using the word Female as an adjective for body parts?! I am so fucking sick of having to have gender essentialism forced down my throat under the guise of it being sexy (and the anti-DEI folks think we're the ones being annoying). There are plenty of non "females" with boobs and women who wish they had boobs. There are many other, better ways if you want to describe someone's tits that don't do this, I promise you.
Nothing happens with the acorns Clara was given which is a shame because it felt like they were given some importance.
Like several other reviews, I don't really like the fact that the clay men plot was so easily solved. It seemed much grander in scale than what was implied but I wonder if Kingfisher ran out of ideas of what to do with them and killed them off to get rid of them.

Content Warnings