Then you have your romance plot, where Halla and Sarkis, her sword-spirit/bodyguard, slowly fall in lust and love for each other. Nothing is basic or normal in this book…) adventure fantasy, where the heroine, Halla, wants to get her inheritance back from her greedy and grasping in-laws. You have your “basic” (in a manner of speaking. It’s an unlikely mix of subgenre that works so well. When Halla draws the sword that imprisons him, Sarkis finds himself attempting to defend his new wielder against everything from bandits and roving inquisitors to her own in-laws… and the sword itself may prove to be the greatest threat of all. Sarkis is an immortal swordsman trapped in a prison of enchanted steel. I highly recommend this to those who enjoy infectious characters with a healthy side of comedy.Halla is a housekeeper who has suddenly inherited her great-uncle’s estate… and, unfortunately, his relatives. Which is only a small bother as the rest of the world-building is sound and done well. There isn’t much time spent on dialects or grammatical structure to differentiate characters. The only barrier to immersion so necessary in fantasy is that the characters sound normal to modern day readers. They provide another route for the underlying comedy to emerge. The included inner monologues enhance the personalities of the characters and give important windows into what is left unsaid. Kingfisher’s fantastic world is sure to keep you turning the pages, eager to see what awaits the vivid characters.

There seems to be something about Halla that endears her to people once they get to know her. Despite her incessant queries, Sarkis is eventually enamored with her for one reason or another and a game of will-they-won’t-they ensues. Perhaps her constant questions centering on the mundane ward off possible candidates. Those that she cared for seem to be distant or gone and, though it is easy for her to form good relationships, there always seem to be thick walls separating the acquaintances from the close friends. Halla is a widow without much to bind her to the mortal plane. This fascinating opening leads to a tumble of events, heart-rending in nature but always with an air of subtle hilarity.

As she was about to kill herself (another obviously reasonable thing to do), a flash of blue led to a strange man appearing in her chambers: Sarkis, who promptly told her to put on some clothes. Of course, the reasonable course of action is to lock the heiress in her room until the inheritance could be secured to stay in the family. Her great-uncle Silas had awarded her his fortune after his death which angered his family. Set in the year of 1346, the protagonist Halla is introduced locked in her room held captive by her own family. Even so, that thought experiment is brought to fruition in SWORDHEART by T. If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like for a sword to be a person…wait, that’s probably not a thing one would think.

Swordheart by t kingfisher