Paladin's Grace by T. Kingfisher

I picked up this book after reading the summary and thinking it sounded pretty cool. I was not wrong, but I had no clue what I had gotten myself into. Still don't for that matter, but I digress. 

Without giving anything away that's not on the dust jacket, the initial set up of the book is following a group of Paladins pledged in the service of the Saint of Steel, one of the several deities in this world. The different servants of the different gods have abilities particular to the deity they serve. Interesting enough. The paladins of the Saint of Steel go into berserker rages in battle, and are nigh-invincible, while the Saint keeps them on target and prevents them from killing innocents. The Saint would then pull them out of the rage when it was no longer needed. How much the deities actually interfere in the day to day is up to interpretation, but one day all of the servants of the Saint of Steel feel the Saint die. They didn't know that a god could even die, but there you go. This event had a bad effect on a group of armed soldiers who could fly into unbridled rages as I'm sure you can imagine. In the aftermath of that tragedy, we follow one Paladin, Steven, as he tries to hold together what's left in life for a warrior-monk who's god had dropped dead. A small qualm I have is that at no point in the story do any of the Paladins really try to figure out what happened to the Saint of Steel, but I'm hoping that that will come up in a later book. 

This is the most genre-blended High Fantasy book I have ever read. High fantasy, gods and knights, monsters and murderers. Romance...oh and did I mention a court-room drama?!? A friggin court-room drama?!? Just wow. This was a fun read, an immersive world, relatable and believable characters. I've been in a fantasy drought lately, and Paladin's Grace shattered it. I want to go deeper in this world, learn more about the Saint of Steel, spend more time with Steven and Grace, and travel to see the other kingdoms. I mean, normally I don't read "Romance" books, but dang if this one didn't sneak me into one AND THEN LIKED IT. 

That being said, I do have a small quibble that at a couple points there are a little bit too convenient deus ex machina plot twists such as being locked in a cell with someone else...but I'll give it a pass and chalk it up to literal intervention of The Rat. Good thing about a world with gods, it gives you plausible deniability...but don't abuse it too much. I will 100% be reading every book in this series and I've already picked up some of the author's other works too. 

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