#clocktaur

Highly, highly recommend this series if you're looking for an amazing escape.

I got the BBC Symphony Orchestra VST from Spitfire Audio about a year ago and I almost immediately started writing this really epic cinematic thing and as soon as I had it sketched out I’m like “damn this sounds like a paladin song” and a switch flipped in my head: I should make a @tkingfisher themed Dungeon Synth album! That track became “Rediscovering Grace” which if you’ve read the paladin books, should make perfect sense to you. :)

I don’t think I’ve ever labored over a release as much as I did this one. I tweaked and re-tweaked and tweaked again until everything was just so. Listening over and over again in the car, on different headphones, taking notes and adjusting down to the level of, like, “flute down .5db” and such. It’s mostly been finished since the beginning of the year, with only Sarkis’s theme and the piano track at the end being done more recently.

I also, for the first time, commissioned artwork rather than bodging something together in photoshop. I couldn’t be more happy with Saga Mackenzie’s cover, it turned out so good.

Anyway, I hope you check it out. I’m really proud of this one and it feels great finally getting it out there.

Preorder is up now, and it goes live August 5th. It will go up on all the usual digital stores in the coming weeks as well.

“I won’t?” said Halla. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“You’re not a killer,” said Nolan, although he sounded a bit doubtful.

“Well, obviously not yet,” said Halla. “But I can start with you, and then I will be. I think that’s how this works, isn’t it?”

I just have to go on a bit of a rant about how fucking Delightful T. Kingfisher’s books are, OK? I love me a good YA fantasy book but I’m beginning to get to the point of “the protagonist is how old and they’re off doing these things? don’t adults have fantasy adventures?” (*blows Lord of the Rings yet another kiss, insert you’re doing great sweetie meme*) and also, despite the ever growing wonderful pool of girls having adventures too, “don’t actual girls have adventures?” (*looks askance at Emberly O’faely, perfect paragon of empty sexy lamp Mary Sue*). Obviously, I will read Howl’s Moving Castle til my eyes fall out, and then I’ll switch to audiobook, but to find another author who has the same kind of sly, dry, wicked humor and the absolute amazing talent to write fantastical characters as if they were very real human beings is like finding out that this delicious book you just finished is going to have a sequel that you didn’t even know about. 

I’m going to carefully put T. Kingfisher’s books in the same small circle I’ve put Terry Pratchett and Diana Wynne Jones. Fantasy books that say, “It doesn’t matter how old a girl is, she’s still amazing and witchy and can go on all sorts of adventures and still, at the end, just be herself.” Fantasy books that are terribly practical and then, like Alice in Wonderland, there’s something that doesn’t make sense: the world is a turtle, there are clear jelly vampire stingrays, a castle trawls the countryside; but the story just rolls with it. The characters just roll with it too. 

Well, then, Swordheart in particular. Which is what the top quote is from. Sometimes epic fantasies don’t fit the exact little hole in your heart (I must admit, of course, that I am halfway through her Clocktaur War duo and am also loving it, deeply), but a middle-aged widow going on an adventure with a swordsman who is also a sword, and a nonbinary lawyer priest is just the size of adventure you need. 

I loved that the romance wasn’t forced. That they were good for each other. That there wasn’t a love triangle or some forced angst for stupid reasons. And obviously, the grumpy one falls for the sunshine one trope gets me every fucking time.

I loved that the sex wasn’t gratuitous or just blandly there with no reason for it. 

I loved that everyone just accepted queer characters. Like the whole world just--casual preferred pronouns! oh, lesbian? bi? straight? no one cares! marry who you want! 

I loved the characters. I loved that I didn’t always like them because they were, after all, human; but I always loved them because they were so real. I would die for Halla. And probably marry Zale. If they liked girls. 

Every time I reread the Clocktaur Wars, I get ridiculously sentimental about handkerchiefs and want to get myself some more. It is silly. I have no significant need for them and spend most of my life at home anyway.

I still love the scene with the horse chestnut peeler. Or chutney maker. Candied apricot shucker?

(Read or reread them now, the new paladin book comes out next month)

I finished reading Ursula Vernon’s The Wonder Engine yesterday, and BOY HOWDY was it was awesome. I’m going to miss these fools. If you like fantasy, snark, and ninja accountants (with a helping of sexy paladin), CHECK IT OUT.