by T. Kingfisher
First sentence: “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.”
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Release date: February 25, 2025 (though you can get the original paperback here)
Review copy pilfered from the ARC shelves at work.
Content: There’s some swearing (maybe some f-bombs? They didn’t stand out), and some fade-to-black sex. It will be in the Romance section of the bookstore.

Halla is a respectable 36-year-old widow who has spent the past 15 years carrying for Silas, her dead husband’s uncle, as he aged and eventually died. As payment (thanks?), Silas leaves everything to Halla, something which her dead husband’s other relatives have issue with. So, what she decides is that all of this would go away if she were dead, and she unsheaths an antique sword Silas had tucked away to do the deed. Except the sword turns out to be a man – Sarkis – who is tasked with serving the wielder of the sword, which happens to be Halla. What Sarkis expects is a lot of fighting…. what he gets is a very long journey to the temple of the Rat God to petition for help solving the inheritance problem, and then a very long journey back.

It sounds like a whole lot of nothing, but Kingfisher is brilliant in making the nothing so much fun. There are laugh-aloud moments, there is a lot of back-and-forth silliness between Sarkis and Halla (not to mention the Rat Priest, Zale, who is pretty delightful themselves) and a very charming slow-burn romance. I usually don’t like the slow burn ones, but this was, well, charming, cozy, delightful, and very rewarding. It’s not spicy, but I found it didn’t matter. It’s very much like a warm hug of a book, one that you read with a smile on your face the whole time. I wanted to finish it faster than I did, but I’m glad I lingered. And yes, I would happily revisit the land for other stories (I think this is a reprint of a book that’s part of a series? I am going to see if I can find the others) set here.

And I’ll reiterate something I’ve come to believe: I’ll read pretty much anything Kingfisher writes (I’m trying to work up the courage to read her horror, too).