Daggerbound

An immediate post-read reaction: I love Edmund, I love the Dervish, and I love T. Kingfisher's work. If only I could download her words DIRECTLY into my brain so I don't have to wait for the rest of this series to be written.

After sleeping on it: Yeah. I'm downgrading this slightly (still amazing, but it's not perfect).

Kingfisher's prose is incredible; her ability to write a complex, realistic world filled with magic, whimsy, romantic tension and lovable characters is unparalleled. Every page of this was a joy. The dual POV is fantastic, and the moments of self-denial felt human rather than manufactured. The sparks between Edmund and the Dervish were undeniably there: the flirting, the friendship, the broken people recognising each other... incredible. I love both of them just as much as I loved Halla and Sarkis.

My criticisms, though, are real, and they stop this from landing as a 5-star read for me.

In many ways this felt like a slightly milder, paler photocopy of Swordheart. The shared core - magic sword man, reluctant wielder, road trip that goes off the rails is the intentional 'sequel' callback. My problem is that, overall, the same story beats arrive in the same order and hit a little more repetitive every time: the same reveal, the same slow thaw, the same "I have hated every wielder before you" turn. Swordheart got there first and felt unique while doing it.

And then the payoff. Hundreds of pages of sexual and romantic tension between Edmund and the Dervish resolve into a couple of lines in a bed, across two separate pages. By comparison, when I read Swordheart, the payoff felt proportionate to its buildup, and this didn't. The tension does all the work (and does it ABSOLUTELY FANTASTICALLY) and then the book declines to deliver on it. For a romance this thoroughly built, that's a real loss, and it sapped some of the joy out of finally seeing them get together.