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Daggerbound: A Review

Today’s the day! T. Kingfisher is dropping a companion novel to the delightful Swordheart, and folks? It’s incredible.

The first entry in this series, the aforementioned Swordheart, is the story of a widow named Halla who comes into the possession of a sword that contains a person who is bound to serve the master of the blade itself. Draw the sword and the soldier, a mercenary leader named Sarkis, appears to protect and aid the owner of the enchanted sword. During the adventures that Halla and Sarkis have together, he mentions other members of his company who were subjected to the same fate. Today, we get to properly meet the first of those other mercenaries, the Dervish.

At the outset of our adventure this time around, we meet Learned Edmund, a dedicate of the Church of the Many-Armed God. Edmund is tired of being a priest, though, and has found a way out of his commitments. He agrees to a transportation mission to a distant city, carrying books and a single artifact to a scholar at another temple some distance away. All he needs to do to be free once and for all is to complete the transfer and never go back (though he does feel somewhat guilty about the idea of not returning Sweetness, the mule, who will be accompanying him on his journey and carrying the books).

Learned Edmund’s plans are quickly thrown into disarray when he’s accosted by bandits on the road. In a desperate attempt to protect the artifact he’s carrying (an old sword that had long been in the protection of his church), Edmund accidentally removes the blade from its sheath. Suddenly, a knife-wielding man appears next to him in a flash of silver and kills the bandits as Edmund himself slips into unconsciousness.

When Edmund awakens under the less-than-stellar medical care of the mysterious man, he learns that the man is none other than the Dervish, cursed to defend the owner of the sword that killed him countless decades in the past. While Edmund is fascinated by the concept of the magic used to seal the Dervish in the blade, he’s also equally appalled by the terrible things that the swordsmith who cursed the Dervish and many of his previous masters have subjected him to. Eventually, a plan is reached for the Dervish to help Edmund reach a scholar who may be able to help them both to break the curse. There are many obstacles in their way, however, not the least among them being the fact that each man is somewhat infatuated with the other. Edmund is kind and considerate of the Dervish’s desires, unlike any master the Dervish has ever had before. The Dervish is handsome, quick-witted, and more caring than Edmund believes a mercenary should be. But if they break the curse, what will become of the Dervish? What fate can await Edmund as a no-longer-priest in a world where his only real goal is to share his knowledge? What happens when the inn only has one bed?

Daggerbound is an absolutely delightful romance adventure, filled with lots of violence, interesting new friends, and a slow burn love story. T. Kingfisher remains one of my all time favorite writers for many reasons, and this book contains most of them. Like Swordheart before it, Daggerbound takes place in the world of the White Rat, so fans of other T. Kingfisher books may see some familiar names and faces again.

Daggerbound is out today, August 25th, 2026. Go get yourself a copy and fall in love with these characters for yourself. My utmost thanks, as always, to NetGalley and to Tor Bramble for an eARC in exchange for a fair review.

Swordheart: A Review

New T. Kingfisher? New T. Kingfisher!

Okay, new-ish. Swordheart was first published back in 2018, but it’s getting a shiny new reprint courtesy of Tor’s Bramble imprint. So, new!

Halla doesn’t have a lot in her life. Her husband died years ago, and she’s been living in her great-uncle Silas’s home, caring for him and the household in his old age. She describes herself as a respectable widow, and while she is infinitely curious, she’s also relatively content to live has she has been.

Silas’s death changes everything. Due to Halla’s having cared for him, he left her (and her alone) all of his possessions in his will, and his other relatives are livid at the perceived slight. Her great-aunt Malva and cousin Alver vow to lock Halla up in her room until she agrees to marry Alver, so that Silas’s house and things will remain in their possession. In her desperation, Halla decides to kill herself, drawing a sword that was in Silas’s collection. Her attempt to stab herself is cut short when a man appears in the room with her. His name is Sarkis, and he is bound to the sword that she just drew. Remove the sword from the scabbard, and you can command him, a la a genie in a lamp. With a duty to protect Halla, as she is the rightful owner of the sword now that Silas has died, Sarkis sets about freeing her from her imprisonment.

After breaking out of what is, by all rights, Halla’s own house now, she and Sarkis flee the small town of Rutger’s Howe (and I can’t help thinking that T. Kingfisher is a Blade Runner fan). They set off on a journey to secure Halla’s inheritance so that she has something to bequeath to her own nieces, having no children of her own, but there are many obstacles in their path. Soon, they have to face off against brigands, lawyers, priests, and unspeakable horrors. With the assistance of Zale (a representative of the Church of the White Rat) and a gnole named Brindle, the adventurers journey from Rutger’s Howe to Archen’s Glory. They need not only to prove that Halla is the rightful heir to Silas’s house and the sword that contains Sarkis, but also solve the mystery of Sarkis’s entrapment in the sword almost 500 years prior.

And what’s an adventure in a medieval-inspired fantasy world without a little romance? This is a Bramble title, after all. Halla is a respectable widow, and Sarkis is an ancient soul bound to an iron blade. That’s not about to stop either of them from developing feelings toward each other. They might be able to eventually tell each other the truth, but truth is often more complicated than it should be. Is Halla attracted to Sarkis only because he saved her life? Is Sarkis only attracted to Halla because he’s been barely able to live as a man over the last few centuries of sword-dwelling? Is it right for a widow to fall in love with her bodyguard and vice versa?

Set in the same world as Kingfisher’s Saints of Steel series, Swordheart will delight fans who will recognize elements of Halla’s journey (and maybe several of the characters she meets along the way). For me, it was my first foray into the world of the White Rat, and I enjoyed every minute of it. Halla is delightfully disarming and has much to learn about the world outside of her small home town, while Sarkis is brusque and harsh but slowly comes to understand the people of the “decadent south” as time passes with her. The influence each has on the other is slow-building, but masterfully written. The reprinted version of Swordheart hits shelves Tuesday, February 25th. Check it out.

My utmost thanks to Tor/Reactor/Bramble and NetGalley for an eARC in exchange for a fair review.