Knight's Shadow

The shitstorm continues in this book. It's not enough that the sadistic and perfectly insane Trin decided to be queen, Falcio is dying of the poison he barely survived in the previous book, sainthood is starting to make Kest go insane, Brasti breaks down, Aline is in constant danger, but someone decided to start murdering the dukes and their whole families and the signs point to the old Greatcoats. Seems like nobody can catch a break in this damn country, eh?

This was something. When I say something, I mean REALLY dark, more than the first, with hilarious moments, and action galore. Thing got much more complicated as well, which is interesting, I am really looking forward to how the author is going to solve this, because at the moment it seems everyone just decided to burn the country to the ground and restart from there. Seriously, if you want to see clear cut good and bad, don't even bother with this.
Personally I enjoy that. Characters with potential for good seem to come up with the worst possible things to do. Everything leads to things turning worse and worse. To be honest, that is one of my favourite elements in the series; that even the best intentions can and will often lead to the absolute worst.

In this one all three of our guys are having their own issues. They all get tested in their ways, have to face their issues, really think about what they are doing with their lives. The same goes for the accompanying girls. A lot of that happens towards the end of the book, so we won't see too much of the results, which.... yeah, that part makes this book feel a bit like setting things up for the next. I'm not saying it is a bad book, but a lot of their achievements will come to their results later.

So now for the soapbox time. Skip if you are so inclined. I warned you.
Nowadays everyone blabbers about female characters and how we absolutely NEED more, while they are inventing ridiculous guidelines. Female characters always need to be flattering to our whole gender or someone will cry sexism.
My opinion? To hell with that. Females have the capacity for the full range of good AND bad characteristics and that is not an insult, but a great thing. When we are good, it's not because of the lack of other possibility and us just being born good, but because we decided to do it and kept that goodness.
Here we finally have some females with the whole scale. Kind, caring, patient, but also sadistic, full of revenge, too hot headed. All.
Now I just hope Sebastien De Castell is as brave as some of his characters and will keep them that way and not dance back and claim women's bad decisions and flaws are always the men's faults.

All in all, this was good. I hope the next one will finally not have torture scenes (they... get a bit old, not gonna lie), but other than that I am looking forward to it. The end of the book makes it obvious that our characters have some huge work ahead of them. The world got developed in this one more (the Dashini assassins, oh my gooood), now they need to start fixing all the issues with the already existing stuff. Maybe finally they will actually have the power to make some progress and not just stumble from one life or death situation to the next.

There is one element I am not wild about, though. Ethalia, Falcio's love interest. I personally don't really love romance, it just doesn't interest me and this one feels a bit nonsensical as well. Sure, she helps him and she's a kind lady, but this gigantic love after actually spending maybe a day together was a bit... annoying, I guess. Oh, well. I can live with that.

Have a nice day and avoid all the conspiracies!