Daggerbound by T Kingfisher
Sometimes the people who have been broken the longest are the ones who need someone to remind them that they are still allowed to want a life.
It's been about eighteen months since I read Swordheart, so—as with far too many sequels—I'd have appreciated a slightly more substantial reminder of what happened previously. Thankfully, I've become fairly accustomed to diving back into a series and trusting that the details will eventually come back to me.
I was mostly looking forward to more of T. Kingfisher's particular brand of fantasy: funny, strange, occasionally horrifying, and populated by people who feel much more real than the situation they're caught up in has any right to be.
As I thought... Daggerbound is very funny fantasy, but the humour never undermines the emotional weight of the story. That's something T. Kingfisher does exceptionally well: jokes and trauma can exist in the same scene without either one feeling out of place.
The characters don't become less affected by their experiences simply because something is funny. Instead, the humour feels like part of the way real people cope—with fear, exhaustion, absurdity and things that are otherwise almost impossible to process. The result is a story that can make you laugh one moment and quietly break your heart the next without ever feeling like it's changed gears.
It surprised me by... how neatly everything came together. At first, the book could have felt like a series of strange fantasy adventures strung together: bandits, cultists, dragons, mysterious diplomats and all the other assorted trouble that Edmund and the Dervish encounter.
Instead, those threads gradually prove to be part of a much larger story, and by the end the apparently disparate pieces fit together beautifully.
But the heart of the book is the relationship between Edmund and the Dervish. Their connection develops gradually, and what makes it so affecting isn't simply that they fall in love. It's that they keep choosing each other whenever they have the opportunity.
The Dervish has every reason to be angry with the world. Edmund has his own scars and disillusionment. Neither of them magically becomes whole because the other person appears. What they do find is someone worth staying for.
And Edmund's devotion to books may be one of the most immediately likeable things about him. He is willing to put himself in genuine danger to protect them, which is obviously the correct and respectable position to take. Anyone who risks their life for a priceless manuscript has my respect.
Book Recommendation: Swordheart by T. Kingfisher, naturally—but if you've already read it, Nettle & Bone is another excellent example of Kingfisher's ability to combine dark fairy-tale elements, dry humour and characters carrying considerably more emotional baggage than they initially let on.
TV or Movie Recommendation: The Mummy (1999). Different flavour of fantasy, but it has that same wonderful combination of adventure, humour, danger and characters who gradually become a little more emotionally important to one another than they expected.
A colour palette: icy blue, weathered grey and the warm amber of candlelight.
A soundtrack: low strings and distant bells, gradually joined by warmer instruments as the story opens up.
A season: deep winter, when the stone is cold and the world feels hard-edged—but there is a fire somewhere nearby.
A mood: wry, bruised, tender and quietly hopeful.
A scent: cold stone, old books and woodsmoke.
Not because Daggerbound is a romance, although it certainly contains one. The Lovers is about choice: the people we choose, the paths we choose, and the decision to keep choosing them.
That is what makes Edmund and the Dervish's relationship so compelling. Neither of them simply falls into a new life and discovers that everything is better now. They make choices, again and again, to trust each other, protect each other and remain together when walking away would be easier.
For two people carrying so much damage, choosing connection is an act of courage.
And sometimes love isn't about finding someone who can make you whole. Sometimes it's about finding someone who makes you want to keep living as the person you are.
Can a broken person learn to live again?
Daggerbound isn't really interested in whether its characters can be restored to some pristine, undamaged version of themselves. The past has happened, and some things cannot be undone.
Instead, it asks whether a person can build a life after being hurt. Can someone who has spent years surviving begin to imagine a future? Can they learn to want things again—to care, to laugh, to protect something precious, to love someone and allow themselves to be loved?
The answer, thankfully, is yes.
Not because the damage disappears, but because a life doesn't have to be perfect to be worth continuing.
Daggerbound publishes on the 25th of August. I received a free copy and am giving an honest review.
