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A review by luckyonesoph
Paladin's Grace by T. Kingfisher
adventurous
lighthearted
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
2.0
(this is me hiding my face in my hands so my friends don't look at me. sorry for this.)
Ok, open the book, read the prologue/first chapter, close the book. Brilliant, 4 stars. A Paladin whose god is dead is an intriging premise! Give me more! (And then a lot less of the rest!) Or you know what, give me a whole book on Marguerite, or Zale, and I'm sold.
I didn't hate this, but I was like...annoyed by it, which is almost worse. Because the more I think about it, the worse it gets.
First of all....where was the fantasy? I know it's primarily a romance, but there was so little fantasy to be found, you could have put these exact characters with this exact plot in a real-life medieval village and I would not have noticed any difference. Maybe that's a me problem, idk.
Second, not a single scene or page or sentence in this book could convince me that these characters are adults in their 30s. They are constantly second-guessing their actions like a pair of whiny adolescents wandering the halls of their high school. The constant horniness gets so old (and honestly extremely creepy) very fast. People are being murdered and Stephen is a 30-plus-year old man who is thinking about how badly he wants to fuck another 30-plus-year old woman. But he can't do that, so he'll just think very murderous thoughts about any man that approaches her. Please grow up. I wanted to smack him in the head and tell Grace to run, but she was just as irritating sometimes. I really wanted to feel bad for her - her backstory really is tragic and angsty and very real - but the constant internal monologue of "I'm so broken" really starts to drag the story down. She acts like a fragile child, and everyone around her treats her like one. And there's nothing I find more boring than the "I'm so ugly/boring/broken/etc, why is he/she/they in love with me?" trope, which both Stephen and Grace have. In spades.
And finally, all of that,for the mystery to essentially get solved off-page? By other, less central characters? This, and so many of the author's other decisions, left me feeling so patronized as a reader, and I hate that feeling.
Ok, open the book, read the prologue/first chapter, close the book. Brilliant, 4 stars. A Paladin whose god is dead is an intriging premise! Give me more! (And then a lot less of the rest!) Or you know what, give me a whole book on Marguerite, or Zale, and I'm sold.
I didn't hate this, but I was like...annoyed by it, which is almost worse. Because the more I think about it, the worse it gets.
Second, not a single scene or page or sentence in this book could convince me that these characters are adults in their 30s. They are constantly second-guessing their actions like a pair of whiny adolescents wandering the halls of their high school. The constant horniness gets so old (and honestly extremely creepy) very fast. People are being murdered and Stephen is a 30-plus-year old man who is thinking about how badly he wants to fuck another 30-plus-year old woman. But he can't do that, so he'll just think very murderous thoughts about any man that approaches her. Please grow up. I wanted to smack him in the head and tell Grace to run, but she was just as irritating sometimes. I really wanted to feel bad for her - her backstory really is tragic and angsty and very real - but the constant internal monologue of "I'm so broken" really starts to drag the story down. She acts like a fragile child, and everyone around her treats her like one. And there's nothing I find more boring than the "I'm so ugly/boring/broken/etc, why is he/she/they in love with me?" trope, which both Stephen and Grace have. In spades.
And finally, all of that,