Swordheart

About Swordheart

Swordheart is a standalone fantasy romance set in the same world as T. Kingfisher's Saint of Steel series, though it requires no knowledge of that series to read. The central premise is one of those ideas that sounds simple and turns out to be surprisingly rich: a woman named Halla inherits an estate from a distant relative, but the inheritance comes with complications — specifically, a family determined to contest it and a spirit named Sarkis trapped inside one of the estate's swords, bound to serve whoever draws the blade. Sarkis is not a genie or a wish-granting mechanism. He is a man — specifically a warrior from another time and culture — who was enchanted into the sword as punishment and has spent centuries being yanked in and out of existence by whoever happens to pick the blade up. He is, accordingly, somewhat tired. He is also fundamentally decent, which is what Halla notices first when she draws the sword in a moment of desperation, not knowing what she's doing. What follows is a road novel in the loose sense — Halla and Sarkis need to solve her inheritance problem, which requires travel, assistance from gnoles (a recurring element of Kingfisher's extended universe), and the gradual dismantling of both characters' assumptions about what the other is. The antagonistic dynamic between them is present but low-key: these are not people who hate each other, they are people who don't yet know what to make of each other, and the distinction matters. Kingfisher is funny here, consistently and specifically. Sarkis's reactions to the contemporary world — to customs, foods, and social arrangements that existed long after his time — provide a running thread of culture-shock comedy that never gets repetitive. Halla is drawn as competent in specifically domestic ways, and the book treats those competencies with genuine respect rather than using them as contrast for Sarkis's combat skills. The romance develops slowly in a story that doesn't have that much time to fill, and the resolution is warm without being saccharine. Swordheart is one of Kingfisher's most enjoyable standalones.

Tropes & Themes