Swordheart by T. Kingfisher

I love T. Kingfisher, from her creepy slow-burning horror-light reworking of Edgar Allen Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher in What Moves the Dead and its sequel What Feasts at Night to her romantic Dungeons and Dragons-esque Saints of Steel series, to the various stand-alone novels and novellas like Nettle and Bone and A Sorceress Comes to Call, I love her narrative voice and the worlds created.

Swordheart takes place in the same world the Saint of Steel books do– a world that feels like a homebrew DND campaign setting; gods are real enough to interact with the world, and there are various types of followers. Frequently appearing are the lawyer-priests of the White Rat, who work to make the world a better place, more or less.

Kingfisher's characters always feel like complete people, even in shorter fiction. Here, the story follows the respectable widow Halla, who, in a very Princess Bridge scene, discovers one of her inherited possessions is a sword that houses the soul of a very real warrior named Sarkis.

So, yes, it's a romance, and its fantasy, but its not romantasy in the way that is popular in the current imagination. Marketed as "cozy," I don't quite agree with that per se, but they are comforting in a character-driven way--it's just that the world contains some violence and horrors.

It's sweet and silly and compelling all at once, hitting the classic elements of a fantasy romance, while managing to feel unique and fresh. But, I really wanted to bring the title up for a couple of reasons. One, it's been difficult to compel myself into anything these days, so responding to something I enjoyed that reminded me of something else, well, that's something to work with. But secondly, it did spark a resonance with me and my current Dragon Age franchise obsession.

If you are a DA:I player, especially if you have ever been a Solas romancer, I think there's a lot of elements of this book that might speak to you. It's less angsty for sure, but, look at the character Sarkis, the man who became embodied in a sword at some point in his mysterious past.

"I have to tell her. I have to tell her now, before there's any more between us. If I don't, if she finds out--when she finds out--it might poison everything."

And

"You are a dead man in live steel. You cannot even promise to grow old with her."

Both are moments of introspection for Sarkis, where, despite all intentions, he has fallen for Halla. Like Solas in DAI, there is an occlusion of the past, and a simultaneous acknowledgement that, in beginning with a secret, it has always already been too late to reconcile--the relationship began with a lie.

It just reminded me in the moment so much of the romance scene with Solas where he offers to remove your Vallaslin (Elven facial tattoos) because he learned the historic truth of their origins; the audience learns later (either in the end of DAI or in playing Veilguard) that Solas, even in revealing a secret here, has held back the true breadth of his history and knowledge. No matter what options the player chooses, Solas will walk away from you, unable to remain in a relationship that he knows will have a reckoning when Lavallen learns the truth, a future which he sees approaching rapidly.

So, it's not quite the same. I have oodles of DA thoughts, and one academic paper forthcoming, so I'm not going to dive deeper into that franchise here beyond to add that Solas is a nuanced and complicated character, and you can only access the full depth of his identity and trauma by playing DAI as a female elf and romancing him. This is considered the "default canon state" for Veilguard, as well, which tells me something about the construction of the world.

Sarkis, on the other hand, is a much more emotional and straight-forward person. He is, or at least he started as, human, for all that he now has a quasi-immortal existence, so I think he offers a fascinating comparison point for a similar, and somewhat common, romance trope.

Also, it gave me an excuse to talk about Dragon Age more.

Swordheart was excellent, a light-hearted palate cleanser of a fantasy world that I always enjoy returning to, and I recommend it highly.