Stephen was a paladin of the Saint of Steel, a god who died. (How? Beats me.) Anyway, that particular god filled his paladins with his presence and gave them berserker powers/guidance/whatever, and when he died, a lot of them just basically lost it. Now only seven have survived, and they are currently working for the Order of the White Rat, a nice organization of problem solvers with an awesome leader, Bishop Beartongue. (More about her, please? Perhaps her own book in the future?) And they....have some reservations, to say the least, about how "safe" they are to be around other people if the berserker rage hits them again without godly assistance.
Stephen is pretty much along the lines of Sam in Sleepless in Seattle: he gets up, he goes about his day, he feels depressed. Oh yeah, and he knits socks a lot, which is adorable. Then he meets a damsel in distress, Grace, in a meet-cute-fake-a-relattionship-in-a-hurry-in-public way and kaboombah, the hormones he thought were dead are rising up.
Grace is a lovely woman, a professional perfume creator who's had a rough go in life. Orphaned, apprenticed, then married to a cheating jerk, she never did manage to get her "license" equivalent in this world, and then finally she and her pet ran away to another city, where she made friends with her spy landlady, Marguerite. Both she and Stephen are super attracted to each other and SUPER AWKWARD about that sort of thing. Grace's husband made her feel like was frigid (nope) and Stephen is all "what if I go berserk?" and that stuff is going on in their heads, but every time they touch or are around each other, it's a giant AWWWWWW.
However, some shit's going down in the city, like something or other that is beheading people. Oh yeah, and someone tried to poison a visiting crown prince that Grace sold perfume to and now she's been arrested for murder.
Literally about the only thing not good in this book--or at least weak--is the poisoner mystery bit. Grace clearly has no motive for murdering a client she likes but doesn't know very well, nor any clue as to how one would poison anyone, but gets suspected because she makes perfumes and the book goes down a pretty fast slope of DANGER YOU'RE GONNA GET EXECUTED on that score. (Though I did super like her nonbinary lawyer, who has a dry sense of humor and definite sense of honor and pragmatism about it all.) By the time the mystery is revealed--some folks may have guessed what's going on already--it Makes Everything Better Real Quick, but once that's revealed it's pretty clear how weakly the whole thing was set up and how nobody was really thinking through who is suspect or even checking on the victim. However, I did like how everyone in the White Rat came together to help Grace.
Also, this book is full of delightful lines and snark and hormones and it's just really fun to read. The author did an Internet rant on the angstiness of paladins years ago and clearly she writes characters who feel guilty and need to get over it and find ways to to make up for it. Good. I enjoyed how he runs off to confess to his fellow paladin Istvhan in the middle of the night and the dude is all "Dude, get laid, get over it," more or less. It's also kind of amusing how later Stephen goes "berserk" in the book and he's all angsting about it and everyone else is pretty much like "Dude, that was not very berserk. Chill. I think you're fine." I do note that both Stephen and Grace are SUPER ANGSTY about attraction and acting on it and are kinda self-flagellate-y in their heads (see below) and this is drawn out a bit. That may bother some people, but not I.
I read a lot of excellent reviews on this book, but I think this was the one that sold me the most, so I leave it here. The romance is adorable and close and steamy, and while the review talks about "bad sex," I don't think so--they acknowledge in the heat of the moment it might not be world's best ever and then end up enjoying themselves anyway, and awwwwwww. These two are adorable just cuddling, y'all.
Four and a half stars from me.
Quotes:
- "He wished that he could break out his knitting, but for some reason, people didn't take you seriously as a warrior when you were knitting. He'd never figured out why." (This is followed by a gory bit in which he imagined taking out someone's eye with double pointed needles, not that he wants to do that and mess up his knitting....)
- Bishop Beartongue to Stephen: "I tell you to go talk to a girl and you foil an assassination attempt. I'm a little frightened to think what might happen if I told you to go to get laid."
- Grace's POV on interacting with Stephen: "First you grind on him like a wanton, then you swoon all over him, now you're giving him a show. This is going marvelously. What's next, tripping and falling on his cock on accident?" This is soon followed by her having to explain dealing with her pet civette's anal gland issues. "It wasn't like the morning could get any worse." Stephen's reaction: "Perfume making is clearly a very glamorous occupation. I had no idea."
- More from Grace's POV: "This is stupid. You just handed him a teacup, that's all. My god, you've climbed the man like a tree and screamed in his ear and fainted on him and made a fool of yourself thinking he wanted to talk to you about something other than the dead man, and now you're blushing over this?"
- Grace: "I think you can generally rely on people to be inconvenient."
- Stephen: "And you will go back to your normal life as well, untroubled by assassinations and attractive women accidentally setting themselves on fire."
- Grace: "First small talk, then pantomimed sex acts in an alley, then murder scene. I'm doing this all wrong, as usual."
- "Granted, she hadn't known Stephen that long, but if you couldn't bond over multiple corpses, what could you bond over?"
- Stephen: "Am I really the only person concerned about the severed head situation in this city? Really?"
- Marguerite: "Men don't panic and make a speech about how there can't be anything between you if there isn't something between you." (MADAM, THIS IS MY LIFE. Har har. Such as that goes.)
- And finally, a quote from the author at the end: "I had it in my mind that I was going to write a fluffy romance. I am a great fan of fluffy romance. I am told that there are generally fewer severed heads and rotting corpse golems in fluffy romance, so possibly this book didn't quite get there, but I'm certain I can write something fluffy eventually. Probably."
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