I will truly read anything they write. Their books are atmospheric and addicting. Felt good to be back in this world again.

I've become such a fan of T. Kingfisher's books over the past couple of years and this one was no exception. I love her writing, her characters, and her hilarious wit. This is a great cozy fantasy and I had so much following Halla and Sarkis's story. The new cover is also absolutely stunning and I hope it'll be able to reach new readers.

This is definitely a cozy read. If you want a low stakes romantasy with good banter and found family, this is for you. I was grinning throughout!

This was a fun and cozy winter read! It's always refreshing to read MCs that aren't 20 years old especially in fantasy. I've only read one other T. Kingfisher book, but I could tell there were some references I probably would have understood if I'd read more of their work.

Halla is a widow in her mid-thirties living in the 1300s who is imprisoned by her deceased husband’s relatives when a great uncle leaves his small fortune to her. They are trying to force her to marry a clammy-handed son of the family to keep the money within said family. Halla’s solution is to kill herself as she sees no other solution and decides attempting to run herself through with a sword bought by her late uncle would be the best option. Surprise, the sword is actually magical and a man (with his own sword) emerges from the sword when it is drawn. He is now bound to Halla as a protector. After realizing the “mortal peril” she is in, being locked in an attic, he steals her away in the night and the pair go on the run from the family and local constables. What follows is the pair falling in love and a great deal of horniness in the “medieval times”.

Unfortunately, while this story had an interesting premise, it fell flat for me. The 30-something year old behaves more like a teenage girl and the “knight” or whatever he is, turns out to be a socially awkward weirdo. The writing style and 1300s didn’t work for me. I could have totally believed the FMC’s dialogue and incompetence in the 1800s or 1900s but not in that day and age. I loved the first few chapters because it struck me as a book that was intentionally not taking itself too seriously, but then it just ended up more cringy and too much overall. Wanted to love it, disappointed I didn’t.

Please note: The link provided is scheduled to go live on February 25, 2025 at 12pm eastern time.

Title: Swordheart
Author: T. Kingfisher
Source: DRC via NetGalley (Tor Publishing Group | Bramble) in exchange for an honest review
Publication Date: February 25, 2025
Synopsis: Goodreads
Purchase Link: Amazon

Other books by this author:
The Hollow Places
A House With Good Bones

Why did I choose to read this book?

The more stories by Kingfisher that I read, the more I am convinced that she is one of my favorite authors. Whether it's horror or fantasy, it's all gold. Anytime I see her name pop on NetGalley I'm gonna request it, and I need to put the books I haven't read yet on my library holds list. Every single book grabs me by my eyes and heart and doesn't let go until the last page has been turned. I love that.

What is this book about?

This book is about misfits and how, when they come together, they can move mountains as long as they stay true to themselves. A magical sword/man, an overly intelligent and well-endowed woman who has learned to act stupid to survive, a gnole, and a priest of the White Rat are gonna take you on a wild ride and you're gonna like it!

What is notable about this story?

I have never, ever wanted two characters to touch each other romantically more than I wanted it in this book. Sarkis' appreciation of Halla's breasts alone was enough for me to be like GIRL HE'S READY TO APPRECIATE YOU LIKE YOU DESERVE PLEASE!!!! The yearning almost killed me. How is Kingfisher so good at anticipation? Like, don't worry reader, if you just read a little further I promise you'll get to see them...accidentally brush arms? But I'm gonna make you want it REALLY BADLY. And honestly? She's right.

Consent is important! BOTH Sarkis and Halla hold their desires back because of a perceived obligation to the other: Sarkis believes that Halla might only be with him because she needs her inheritance back, Halla believe that Sarkis might only be with her because of his magical obligation to the sword's wielder and not his actual feelings. This is the main reason they do not get together sooner, but it's a pleasant and not-forced plot device. Their consideration for each other only deepens their feelings for the other.

This ending was very, VERY satisfying in every way it could be AND it left me wondering what was coming next at the same time. I love an ending that is both an ending and a beginning. Where is the next book please?

Was anything not so great?

This is not a critique of the author's writing but more my own personal gripe - I feel like I had to wait too long to see Sarkis and Halla together. I don't feel like I had long enough to bask in the glow and sunshine of their affection for each other. I wish that pivot had happened earlier in the book so I could have enjoyed it for longer.

What's the verdict?

5 stars on Goodreads. This story is 100% pure gold and I will throw it at anyone who feels like they need something new to read. You like fantasy? BOOM read this. You like romance? BOOM read this. You like modern concepts of consent and obligation? BOOM read this. You like weird ladies who don't meet conventional standards of the time but thrive anyway? BOOM read this.

Preorder this one. You can be sure that your money is well spent. If it's after publication, buy it immediately, what are you waiting for?

I thought this was very good and I will have to add this to the shop shelves. Thank you for the chance for us to review.

*ARC from NetGalley*
Personally, I feel like not a lot really happened in this book and was just a lot of boring travel. It’s clear it’s saving more backstory for the next book but it would have been good to get more insight in this one. One of the nice parts about the book was all of the characters voices and the author really wrote the dialogue in a way that let you into their heads and stream of consciousness. The banter and humor was really nice and overall it’s a cool premise that I haven’t seen before. Unfortunately, the romance felt a little lacking and as mentioned above, it was a touch boring.

This is a cozy fantasy perfect for someone who is in the mood for an escape but wants a low-stakes plot. Come for the charming, quirky, and sometimes unhinged (positive) characters, stay for the vibes.

Halla’s late husband’s great uncle dies and leaves her his inheritance. In order to avoid dealing with her lecherous, clammy-handed relatives, she decides to kill herself. The sword she finds is perfect— until a centuries-old warrior appears and stops her. Suddenly, Halla finds herself the wielder of an enchanted sword and its northern, supposedly more civilized curmudgeon, Sarkis.

Together, the two embark on an incredible journey that feels more like a series of unfortunate events, in order to secure her new estate and all it entails. The cast of characters that comes together forms the most dysfunctional (positive) found family.

The characters are a bit one-dimensional, but it doesn’t inhibit the plot. Their interactions feel reminiscent of the equally witty and silly dialogue of The Princess Bride, making it easy to read and enjoy.

Sorry to be a hater but I was really disappointed in this books execution. I was immediately hooked from the very first line and the premise seemed interesting enough with a magical sword, genie in the bottle type situation. But, it just went so far downhill after that. I think my biggest issue with this is the way that it was written. It was trying way too hard to be funny and witty but it just came off as immature and dumb. There was just too many jokes and one-liners and potty humor honestly. We spent WAY too long about how he could pee when he was in the sword. Why would I care about that????

The characters were so one dimensional for a majority of the book. We finally figure out why both of the main characters are the way that they are, but it is with only 50 pages left to go in a book that has more than 400...so it just didn't matter to me anymore. Speaking of 400 pages long...that is just simply not necessary for a cozy fantasy. Especially a cozy fantasy where there are only about 5 plot points.

Going through others reviews I am clearly in the minority but I truly do not understand how people enjoyed this. The lack of plot, character diversity and growth, slow pace, and length just all add up to a two star from me. It was honestly a slog to get through.

Maybe me and T. Kingfisher just don't mix because this is the second book by them that I have just not enjoyed, I will not be continuing the series.

Having really enjoyed T Kingfisher's romantasy books in the past I fully expected to love this one. Swordheart is a fun, cozy romantasy with a sweet romance and entertaining banter. Though I found it to be a light, mostly entertaining read there were a few things that really irritated me about the story.

First and foremost, this book is too long. I have found some of T Kingfisher's books to be repetitive in the past but this one had the weakest pacing by far. I didn't love either of the characters in this one either. I found Halla's quirky, airhead nature to be tedious, though she did have her moments. And Sarkis was a shallow, brooding love interest. Their romance was cute, but for such a long book I think the story would have benefited from a slower burn to the romance. I just started to get bored of them and I was tired of reading about Sarkis lusting after Halla. I also found the third-act conflict irritating and completely unbelievable.

Thank you to Tor Publishing Group/Bramble and NetGalley for providing me with this ARC.

I received this book for free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

I am pretty sure I've said this exact thing before, but I'll say it again—I'm a simple girl, when I see a book by T. Kingfisher, I have to read it. Swordheart, a fantasy romance which features a blossoming love between a bodyguard (who also happens to be an enchanted sword), and a widow, is no exception to my Kingfisher reading rule. Like all of Kingfisher’s works, Swordheart shows off her enchantingly unique blend of whimsy and darkness. However Swordheart sacrifices substance for style and I found it didn’t really work for me as well as some of the author’s other works, like the darling and utterly magical A Sorceress Comes to Call.

Swordheart introduces readers to the main character, Halla, as her last remaining relative, the eccentric Silas, dies and bequeaths his entire estate to her. This would be fantastic if it weren’t for his grasping, clammy-handed relatives, who are trying to force her into marrying her cousin in order to keep the fortune in the family. Desperate to escape their clutches, Halla ponders suicide, unsheathing a ceremonial sword in the hopes of falling upon it, only to find that it's enchanted. This magic sword is inhabited by a warrior named Sarkas, who is not only adamantly opposed to her committing suicide, but also vows to protect her as his new wielder.

"It was one thing to remove a woman from a house she very much did not wish to be in. It was another to become a fugitive in a strange land within an hour of meeting."

I really liked that Halla is an older female main character—a woman in her mid-thirties. Not only is this my own age range, but I feel like it’s very rare to read a fantasy novel featuring, let alone centering on, a female protagonist outside of her teens or twenties. I also delighted in the fact that Halla was open about not wanting children and that Swordheart sees this as a positive thing, instead emphasizing everything else that the woman had to offer.

Despite this great representation of an older woman besmirching societal norms, there is not a whole lot of depth to Halla or any of the other characters. Sarkas, Halla, and the rest of the cast, including a non-binary priest named Zale, feel more like archetypes than actual fleshed out characters with complex motivations. Unfortunately this lack of development meant that the romance also fell flat for me. I wasn’t at all convinced that Sarkas and Halla would have fallen for one another if they found themselves meeting in any other situation and couldn’t help but to feel that their relationship bordered on insta-lust, which is something I don’t personally care for except in small doses.

"Respectable widows certainly did not sleep in the arms of their guardsmen, but Sarkis was an enchanted sword, so that didn't count, did it?"

Plus, their relationship is very basic overall. It boils down to a burly sword warrior who can show Halla, a poor, innocent sex-starved widow with large breasts and childbearing hips, what being with a real man is like. It is a little hard to believe that Halla, a woman in her mid-thirties who has been married before, is so innocent and inexperienced, but here we are, needing a man to introduce her to the mere concept of pleasure. That cringiness aside, I also didn’t enjoy that Swordheart relies on contrived miscommunications for drama.

But to be honest, much of the plot of Swordheart requires some suspension of disbelief. The novel is basically a giant road trip that simply involves the characters just travelling back and forth and dealing with whatever mishaps, magic or not, they encounter along the way. Making matters worse is the lack of world-building. Swordheart takes place in a world that was already established in other of Kingfisher’s works, so people that have already read that book might see the world-building a little differently than I, a person who hasn’t read the other works, do. I found the framework for the world to be incredibly vague, and the fantasy elements definitely take a backseat to the romance as well, just like the plot.

I really had trouble staying interested in the novel, especially after about the 40% mark. Though Swordheart is a light book, I had trouble staying focused due to the sheer amount of banter and outright silliness. I wish there had been a bit more of a balance between the whimsy and gravity. Even the most tense moments of Swordheart are filled with the flair for the ridiculous, which made it hard for me to take anything seriously. This balance is something that Kingfisher accomplishes with aplomb in Nettle & Bone, in my opinion.

"'He collects rare antiquities. I am, by definition, a rare antiquity.'
'Oh. Hmm. You Think he'd want to collect you?' Sarkis shrugged, then remembered she couldn't see it. 'He might.'
'But you're a person.''
A fact that stops surprisingly few people.'"

Around 80% of the way through Swordheart, a confrontation takes place between Sarkis and Halla that feels incredibly forced and ridiculous. The entire novel centers around the theme that Halla is different than other wielders of Sarkis’s sword and that she seems him as an actual person, just to toss it out in the eleventh hour for some cheap drama. How they deal with this is also incredibly frustrating and at this point, I was determined to get to the end of the novel as quickly as possible.

After reading a ton of T. Kingfisher’s novels, I am finding that some of her books really work for me, and that others just don’t resonate with me. This is okay because even when the novels aren't my favorite, I always enjoy the unique story and humor that Kingfisher brings to the table. Swordheart unfortunately falls into the latter category for me, and I much prefer other works of hers, like Nettle & Bone, The Twisted Ones, A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking, and Illuminations. For fans of her wanting to read a romance, I recommend reading Bryony and Roses.

The world-building in Swordheart is rich and immersive, creating a diverse and accepting universe that enhances the narrative. Kingfisher's ability to balance tension with lighthearted moments ensures that the story remains both entertaining and emotionally resonant. The banter was perfect.

3.5 stars --
• after inheriting her great-uncle’s estate (& with it his relatives), halla, a housekeeper, teams up with sarkis, a swordsman trapped inside an immortal sword. after halla draws the sword, sarkis does whatever it takes to protect halla from those out to get her, including bandits, inquisitors, and her horrible in-laws.
• this is such a fun, silly take on the hero’s journey. it’s got intrigue, romance, battle scenes, but all told with a charm & wit that makes this story feel more low-stakes.
• it felt a bit long at times, and sometimes the whimsy felt a bit much, but overall i enjoyed!

Swordheart is a fantasy tale about our main character, Halla, whom we meet locked up inside a bedroom by her Aunt Malva in an attempt to force Halla to marry her son, and Halla’s cousin (by marriage), Alver in an attempt to reclaim Uncle Silas’s inheritance that was left only to Halla. Out of time, and options, Halla takes a sword off the wall to end her life but after unsheathing it finds Sarkis standing in her room. Sarkis claims he came from inside the sword. Sarkis also claims that he is duty bound to help the wielder of the blade.

A wonderful story of adventure blooms off this plot, which only is further enhanced by the character development of the characters throughout the story. The banter only serves to drive the character development and plot forward. In moments when Halla tries to downgrade herself or call herself stupid, Sarkis is there with an inner monologue of insight to disperse her fears of how she will appear to him (or anyone else) with not only kind words to drive away her negative thoughts but to assert in her a positive relationship in which it seems Halla never had before.

It’s a refreshing take that puts added importance on the fact the characters in this tale aren’t young people in their twenties. They are middle-aged (and maybe a few hundred years old give our take) and full of wisdom or bleakness that only the world can show in all its beauty and brutality over the years. And yet, through her own bleak circumstances, Halla remains ever positive with an outlook on life that looks for the bright instead of the dark. It’s a love story, of sorts, that progresses in a way we can believe; Halla’s kindness to Sarkis and in treating him like a man and not a weapon. Small gestures of decency we, as the reader, come to find endearing and touching that drive home how Sarkis’s viewpoint of Halla changes throughout the course of their journey with the same being shown for Halla.

The side characters we meet throughout this book are equally as endearing and funny. Zale the Rat Priest and the gnole, Brindle becoming unforgettable companies that spark a new level of kinship for Halla that she didn’t have before.

Swordheart exceeded every expectation I had while going along on this journey. A grew attached to each character, including the side characters, and found myself laughing out loud more than a few times while reading. T. Kingfisher has only solidified themselves further as being one of my favorite authors of our generation and I cannot wait to continue to devour more of their works.

Thank you to NetGalley and Tor Publishing Group for this advanced reader copy.

SWORDHEART is peak T. Kingfisher. A fleshed out world, found family, and a grounded romance. Who doesn’t love a meet cute that starts with trying to end it all? Halla is a heroine you can’t help but root for. She’s smart, resourceful, and loves with her whole heart. Sarkis is a grumpy immortal, dedicated to his mission and, now, his chance at a new future. But most important for me, Kingfisher gave me side characters that not only added to the story, but that I wanted to read more about! It was peak friendship watching Zale, the priest/lawyer, nerd out with Halla. And Brindle is a relatable gnole, beyond exasperated with humans. SWORDHEART is well paced, funny, and reaffirms for readers that good help may be hard to find, but it’s definitely worth the trip.

I can't express how much I LOVED Swordheart! Halla and Sarkis are absolutely wonderful! I adore T. Kingfisher's writing and this book is no exception. It was so funny and sweet, with the world building always present in Kingfisher's work. I have to!d anyone who will listen to read this book.

Thank you so much, Netgalley and Tor books for an ARC of this gorgeous book!

I liked this, but it admittedly was not my favorite Kingfisher. Often, darker themes in the plot and some stakes balance out her humor and the tone of her writing for me. This felt a bit light all the way through, and the plot was a little vague for me. There were a lot of little comments about the world that were brought up and never really expounded upon. I would be interested in reading about the world more. (Especially after the Vagrant Hills chapter, which I really enjoyed).

I thought the characters were fun to read about, but I felt a bit lukewarm on this attraction-driven romance. In general, Swordheart was fine, but I have been spoilt by the layers in Kingfisher's more recent work (Thornhedge and Sorceress Comes to Call, I especially loved).

Great character interactions and I was hooked on Serkis from the beginning! Halla really knows how to bring the humor, but I found her to be a little too much with the run on thoughts. If the moments where there were thoughts italicized were a bit condensed, it wouldn’t have taken me so long to read the novel. Despite the story needing to be shortened a bit, I really did enjoy this cozy fantasy romance read!

Thanks to NetGalley, Tor Publishing Group and T. Kingfisher for the ARC, all opinions are my own.

Swordheart is a unique, lighthearted fantasy romance book!

Halla was an enjoyable protagonist to read about. She was inquisitive, intelligent, and strong. The love interest, Sarkis, was also a compelling character and I liked his protectiveness over Halla. However, there were moments in which it felt like both Halla and Sarkis were acting younger than their ages. They were supposed to be in their mid-thirties but sometimes they felt almost like teenagers. This didn't necessarily take away from my enjoyment of the book but it was something worth noting.

The romance that blossomed between Halla and Sarkis was sweet and it was entertaining watching them both pine for each other throughout the story.. Their emotional connection was not the strongest I've seen but the chemistry was there and the banter between them
was good as well.

My biggest complaints about this book were the ending and the pacing. The end felt so abrupt that I thought I had somehow skipped a few pages..It almost felt like the author was setti9ng up for a sequel, but I don't believe that's the case. As for the pacing, it was a bit slow at times and I found myself wishing for more action. However, even in the slower moments, I was still intrigued enough by the story to keep reading.

Overall, this wasn't groundbreaking but it was a fun read. If you're a fan of cozy fantasy romance and this story appeals to you, I'd say give it a try.,