”Halla of Rutger’s Howe had just inherited a great deal of money and was therefore spending her evening trying to figure out how to kill herself.”

This is the opening line of the book this line tells you the kind of humour you’re going to get. Intelligent, unexpected but always with a great comedic timing. The banter is top notch and had me chuckling throughout the whole book.

”…you don’t put a five-year old on a horse and tell her to go bring a man back dead or alive. Or do they do that in the Weeping Lands, too?” “We try to wait until the child is at least six for that.”

Kingfisher has to be my favourite author. I have never met a book of hers that I didn’t love and this is no exception. Halla is a 30- something widow who finds herself at odds with her relatives over her inheritance. Along with her sworn protector she ends up on an adventure to help her get it back. Along the way we have many fun side quests, great characters some who we love and some we hate. Kingfisher is brilliant at writing characters who we loathe, others who we implicitly trust and others who we aren’t entirely sure about. This is great for keeping us on our toes. At it’s heart, this is a cozy fantasy. The world is epic but the stakes are smaller and more real. Our heroine complains of her sore hips and never have I felt like I could identify so strongly with a character. We have heroes doing the dishes but they can also slay a bad guy if the need calls for it, making my 30- something heart swoon. All along the way, Kingfisher weaves in little jokes and then brings them back at precisely the right time to have me laughing out loud. The romance is not over the top, nor is it smooshed in for the sake of a spicy scene. It is thoughtfully woven through in a way that I find very enjoyable. I wouldn’t call this a spicy book, though it does have mild sex scenes in it. Our characters are over 30, but she is a respectable widow, after all.

It ends without a cliffhanger but with a few unanswered questions. So i am very much looking forward to reading the sequel, Daggerbound, which comes out this month (Aug 25 2026). I am told, however, that I should read Clockwork Boys and The Wonder Engine before I read Daggerbound and I shall listen! What a shame to have to enjoy two more brilliant books.

Swordheart is in the same world as the Paladin series as well. So if you are a fan of that series I heartily recommend you pick up this one. We even have a few overlapping characters and timelines. The vibes are also very much the same, just fewer paladins.