If anyone were inclined to ask (“and I note they’re not”) why I like T. Kingfisher’s take on cliched characters like paladins, it’s because she works so hard to take them seriously.
Take the Saints of Steel. And the paladins of the Dreaming God — the ones who kill demons, mostly in farm animals. I mean, can you get more cardboard than a paladin? But not to Kingfisher. Her paladins are complex human beings whose careers are not voluntary and they’re just trying their best to cope with a fate they didn’t ask for, one that sets them far apart from other people.
They’re also well aware of their duties as holy killers not only to be efficient killing machines, but also to comfort the survivors when the mayhem is over. Acutely they are aware; they know they’re no more than tools in the hand of a god.
The saint put the madness on you and took it off again, and afterward you had people left who weren’t part of the fight and didn’t need to see the carnage that had overtaken their farm or their village. It was easiest simply to use the paladin’s voice, tell them not to look, and help them away from the scene.
And that is the only reason they used us, instead of hiring...oh, clockwork monsters from Anuket City, or Golems, say. Assuming they could find a golem maker, in this day and age. Soulless machines kill as efficiently as we did, but they cannot comfort the survivors afterward. Or make reports. Stephen had a fairly cynical idea about which was ultimately more important to a commander.
— p. 132
“Does the sword complain when its wielder puts it aside?” Caliban asks in The Wonder Engine. It’s an interesting perspective, to be an ordinary person who is picked up by a god and used like a tool. And then set aside. The god has zero interest said tool’s opinion of the matter, which makes things complicated.
Especially when the god dies, and the tools lose their purpose, a purpose they never asked for in the first place but now can’t live without. Or maybe they can.
Stephen is probably the most battered and sad of the dead god’s paladins, a perfect foil to Istvhan. We really like Istvhan, the witty, quasi-barbaric, eminently practical and ultimately wise and kind and humane survivor of the dead god’s holocaust.
No, Stephen is something of a poet, likening the memory of the god’s presence to one of Grace’s perfume bottles hidden inside the chest:
Imagine that it was just there, like your heart or your lungs or your spine. Sometimes you were aware of it, sometimes it had light or heat but mostly it was just present. And once in a great while, you would open the bottle and it would pour out over you, like golden fire . . . And then one day, without warning...it shattered. . . . All the light and heat gone. A sucking darkness. And you are left with broken glass in you chest, and every time you move, it cuts you to ribbons.
— p. 151
How could one not like these guys? And how could we not like the Temple of the Rat, that sheltered, protected and allowed the handful of surviving paladins to heal from the worst thing that could have ever happened to a person: to have been touched by a god, and then to have that touch ripped away.
And instead of portraying paladins as perfect human beings above reproach, possessing all the qualities of a well-trained golden retriever, this group is, as Beartongue says, “wallowing in guilt over how you are the very worst person ever” (p. 329). Not what I would have expected.
I quite like Kingfisher’s perspective in picking up characters who normally would have been scenery and making them the protagonists. Especially in a story like this: one in which there’s a fairly pedestrian espionage plot set up possibly-to inflame relations between Anuket City and Archenhold, but ultimately a plot that’s traceable all the way back to Charlock whose crown prince, the ostensible victim of an assassination plot, has been reduced to set dressing and a deus ex machina role. Even the villain is something of a caricature. The main characters in a straightforward fantasy would have been the prince, Marguerite, and du Valier, except this is a plot that could have been solved by a border collie it was so blatant.
But of course, the Big People are not the main characters, but are reduced to bit players, A handful of broken paladins and a perfumer worried about the wrong secrets — they’re the protagonists. Some reviewers have likened Kingfisher to Terry Pratchett, but I’m not really sure the writers line up cleanly, except for their senses of humor and generosity of spirit. And maybe in the slightly slant take on a plotline.
There are, of course, many other things to consider in Paladin’s Grace, which takes place after Swordheart and both of them several years after the Clocktaur Wars duology: the essential, but understated role of the gnoles (and we can all be glad that Learned Edmund lived to write his book about gnole society); the simmering trouble with wonderworkers, this time with the smooth men mystery; the return of Zale (who is a delight of a lawyer) and his continuing feud with the Motherhood, who make the Inquisition look half-hearted, and the introduction of Istvhan, who stars in the next book, Paladin’s Strength. Anuket City is still nibbling around the edges of the narrative, and so is Charlock, a land of “old warrior traditions,” as Beartongue says. “You know the kind, Istvhan, your homeland’s lousy with them.” (p. 46) The Saint of Steel died some three years ago, and we’ve met Piper, who will come to figure in future books.
One more detail that I suspect will come up in some future book. Beartongue tells Zale, “Competence is its own punishment. I haven’t forgotten your work with the swords” (p. 115). Swords plural. In Swordheart there was only one sword, and the rumor of another pursued by the cultists, and Sarkis’ deep wish to free the two friends who followed him to his fate. So….swords?
Romantasy shouldn’t be this diverting. I do have quibbles with these books, but mostly they’re just that — quibbles. This series is not one that imparts high ideals and deep truths, but the books, outrageous as they are, offer keen observations about people — their prickly parts and their prides. And there’s much to be said for fun, even if, or especially if, the main characters are utter reversals of our expectations.
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