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Dec. 27th, 2018 08:49 pmI'm continuing to enjoy Ursula Vernon/T. Kingfisher's forays into high fantasy romance -- I read all of Swordheart in a day while lounging on ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ep_birdsall's parents' couch, and it's very pleasantly doing the thing that it's doing, which is creating a palatable version of a time travel Viking romance full of characters who enjoy poking holes at the genre they're in.
The premise: middle-aged widow Halla has just unfortunately inherited an elderly relative-by-marriage's estate, and his remaining relatives have locked her in a room until she agrees to marry one of them.
Fortunately, also locked in the room with Halla is a magical sword containing the spirit Sarkis, of a murderedViking northern mercenary who is sworn to serve the sword's owner!
The first half of the book is mostly them falling in love on the subsequent fantasy road trip, which confused me a little about pacing because I was reading in e-book and therefore didn't realize that there was a whole second half of the book, in which Halla and Sarkis acquire a genderqueer lawyer-priest to help sort out Halla's inheritance issues, plus an ox and a wagon-driver to transport the lawyer-priest, and they all troop back to Halla's town of Rutger's Howe (I'm guessing that's an homage to Ladyhawke;I don't think I'm supposed to be envisioning Sarkis as Rutger Hauer, but who knows) and have several more fantasy road trip adventures and it's all reasonably charming, albeit with a fairly significant amount of murder.
(At first I was mildly put off by Halla's habit of asking lots of questions constantly in the middle of fight scenes, which I was clearly meant to find charming but, like, maybe wait ten seconds for a slightly better time maybe? but I came round on it. Sarkis has, you know, many of the character flaws you would expect from a murder fantasy Viking who lives in your sword, but people generally call him on them, so that's fine.)
Apparently the start of a Vikings Trapped In Swords romance trilogy, at least one of which looks set up to be queer!
ep_birdsall's parents' couch, and it's very pleasantly doing the thing that it's doing, which is creating a palatable version of a time travel Viking romance full of characters who enjoy poking holes at the genre they're in.The premise: middle-aged widow Halla has just unfortunately inherited an elderly relative-by-marriage's estate, and his remaining relatives have locked her in a room until she agrees to marry one of them.
Fortunately, also locked in the room with Halla is a magical sword containing the spirit Sarkis, of a murdered
The first half of the book is mostly them falling in love on the subsequent fantasy road trip, which confused me a little about pacing because I was reading in e-book and therefore didn't realize that there was a whole second half of the book, in which Halla and Sarkis acquire a genderqueer lawyer-priest to help sort out Halla's inheritance issues, plus an ox and a wagon-driver to transport the lawyer-priest, and they all troop back to Halla's town of Rutger's Howe (I'm guessing that's an homage to Ladyhawke;I don't think I'm supposed to be envisioning Sarkis as Rutger Hauer, but who knows) and have several more fantasy road trip adventures and it's all reasonably charming, albeit with a fairly significant amount of murder.
(At first I was mildly put off by Halla's habit of asking lots of questions constantly in the middle of fight scenes, which I was clearly meant to find charming but, like, maybe wait ten seconds for a slightly better time maybe? but I came round on it. Sarkis has, you know, many of the character flaws you would expect from a murder fantasy Viking who lives in your sword, but people generally call him on them, so that's fine.)
Apparently the start of a Vikings Trapped In Swords romance trilogy, at least one of which looks set up to be queer!
