Reviews with content warning for Sexual content - Swordheart

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Swordheart by T. Kingfisher

47 reviews

ithilien11's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional hopeful fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

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sydapel's review against another edition

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adventurous funny hopeful slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

Felt a lot like reading a Dungeons and Dragons campaign in the best way. Equally parts silly, heartwarming and always surprising, plus you can't really get better than an immortal warrior who is trapped inside a sword for a bodyguard.

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xta_07's review against another edition

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funny hopeful lighthearted slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.75

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purrson's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional funny hopeful inspiring mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

The narration is absolutely delightful, as is the book itself, and made me laugh out loud multiple times. The main characters are firmly adults, in their late thirties, which I appreciated, and flawed in their own ways but super lovable. I anyways enjoy Kingfisher’s world building, and this is no exception.

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jwells's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional funny

I really enjoyed the character of Halla. She's funny and practical. I like that she's not a badass heroine, but she's very down to earth and brave in her own way.

Great to revisit the world of the Clockwork Boys, though this story is a standalone. I like the people like the gnoles and the rune.

The plot is much smaller scale here, compared to the Clockwork Boys books. It's more of a family story plus a romance, not a save-the-world fantasy.

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katewheels13's review against another edition

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adventurous funny medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

5.0

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alexijai98's review

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adventurous funny lighthearted medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

Fun read like the Saint of Steel series! You don’t need to read the Clockwork Boys to read this, though I will be picking the duology up because I’ve become a big fan of this world!

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danajoy's review against another edition

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adventurous funny mysterious

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.5

T Kingfisher's brand of fairytale is exactly what I want from a fantasy. The characters are charming and imperfect.

Whilst Swordheart is a standalone it exists in the same world as the Clocktaur War and Saints of Steel books, making up the World of the White Rat. I've only read Paladin's Grace but even so it was exciting to see the overlap.

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city_girl_writer's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional lighthearted medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes

4.0

Surprisingly really enjoyed this! The fantasy world is solid and the romance was cute. The third-act breakup was annoying, but kinda understandable. Looking forward to reading more fantasy romance from T. Kingfisher in the future.

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bluejayreads's review against another edition

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adventurous slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated

4.75

This is an unusual book. First of all, the back cover doesn't actually tell you much about what actually goes on in the book - which is Sarkis, immortal swordsman in the most literal possible sense, is now bound to Halla, a housekeeper trying her darndest to get her inheritance and evade her aunt's attempts to steal it. Considering the majority of the story takes place while traveling back and forth on one particular stretch of road in an effort to set up what is essentially a court case, it doesn't sound all that appealing.

There's also the whole romance angle. It's not even hinted at on the back cover, but it's glaringly obvious from the moment Sarkis enters the story that he and Halla are going to be a thing. And for how much of that angle is some variety of mutual pining, I shouldn't have liked that very much, either.

And yet. And yet I liked this book a lot. Because while boiling this story down to its barest elements does indeed make it sound quite boring, it's the details that get boiled away that make it so much fun. The world itself is, for the most part, a standard rural vaguely-Western-European setting. But with Sarkis being several hundred years old and remembering different things about his homeland and his home time, the world has a sense of having depth and longevity and realness - it may not be teeming with excitement and adventure, but it feels solid, somewhere you could sink your teeth into. (Plus there's that one weird group of hills full of very nasty things that definitely do not stay in one place, which adds some delightfully dangerous whimsy to the whole thing.) And the plot itself, while not on the surface incredibly exciting, is solid. The goals and motivations are clear, the consequences of failure are quite dreadful (though not life-and-death), and the journey, though mostly back and forth on one road, has enough detours and obstacles to never feel truly dull. Besides creepy moving hills, they also encounter bandits, some very unpleasant priests, and a host of other interesting allies, antagonists, and situations that add up to a very entertaining story.

What really makes this book sing, though, are the characters. Halla and Sarkis, obviously, but also Zale, the nonbinary lawyer-priest who Halla enlists to help legally stake her claim on the inheritance and so ends up spending a lot of the journey with them. All of them are great in their own unique ways, and even the more minor characters are engaging. Even with all of that, though, this book could have easily slipped into "well-written and generally fine but overall lackluster" territory - if it wasn't for the dynamic between Halla and Sarkis, which was the absolute star of the book for me.

And most of that was Halla. I love her so much. She's smart, practical, no-nonsense, and incredibly quick-witted. She knows her options are limited as a widow in a patriarchal society, but she refuses to let that stop her, and her humility bordering on self-effacement makes her utterly unashamed to let people think less of her if it moves her closer to her goals. She wields ingenuity and fast-talking instead of a sword and shield, but she's just as much of a warrior as Sarkis. And that's what made their dynamic so good - I loved Halla accepting each new development and figuring out how to deal with it, while Sarkis got progressively more amazed at how this random middle-aged housekeeper was dealing with everything so well and kept falling more in love with her. (The romance angle could easily have been annoying, but I liked their dynamic so much I didn't mind.)

This book is also hilarious. It's peppered with absurd moments and unexpected one-liners that made me laugh. Although I tried reading a few of them to my husband and he didn't find them funny, so I think they're only funny in the context of the book itself. Either way, I thought it was a great touch, and the humor was balanced really well with the darker elements of the book.

This is exactly the kind of book I'm starting to expect from T. Kingfisher - serious without feeling too dark, an uncomplicated but engaging plot, and characters that leap off the page and elevate the story into something great. I'm a little sad that there isn't a sequel to this book (I really want more Halla), but I have more T. Kingfisher books on my reading list, and I hope they're enjoyable as this one is.

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