"Blade" is such a great word

[chocolatepot]

At the book sale today I bought (an armload of pretty books to sell on Etsy) this book, Sky of Swords, and so far I am loving it. The universe is medieval/renaissance Europe with some magic - the main thing seems to be these Blades, guardsmen who are magically bound to a person for some period of time, usually only for their late 20s, so if you have fealty!kink (and I do have fealty!kink) it is definitely excellent in that way. It's basically a heavily, heavily fictionalized version of Henry, Mary, and Edward Tudor (there's no Elizabeth, Malinda is in some ways a conglomerate), and as you may know I love love love fiction that plays with actual historical narratives in fictional universes so you can go "what if" without being a straight-up "what if" AU.

The one sour note is that the author (Dave Duncan, and may I also add that I did not even realize that the author was male until I just checked, and I like that) falls a bit into the "people act like what they look like" trap.