Title: The Knight's Secret
Series: The Mage Conspiracy Series (#1)
Author: Jeffrey Bardwell
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 217
Publisher: Twigboat Press
What Goodreads has to say:
Sir Corbin, retired Hero of Jerkum Pass, rides for honor, glory, and his pension with the aid of a magic ring. The knight’s mission takes him to the capital of the Iron Empire. The city is in an uproar. The emperor has been slain by rogue mages. The new empress is livid. Soon all mages are suspect . . . including Corbin’s daughter.
When Corbin dies on the eve of the mission, his granddaughter Kelsa dons his armor and his wrinkles to save her mother. Hidden behind the magic ring, she infiltrates his old regiment. The army has become a slithering nest of vipers. Imperial mages and cavalrymen move warily around each other. Both sides snare the disguised hero in tight coils of suspicion, politics, and lies. When the vengeful empress launches a vendetta against all mage kind, Kelsa must decide whether to save her family or preserve the empire.
Unravel The Knight’s Secret, the first fantasy adventure of The Mage Conspiracy series. Discover a world of lurid entanglements and political intrigue where lies cut deeper than any sword.
What I have to say:
First of all, this is The Knight's Secret relaunched: version 2.0. (I reviewed 1.0 here.)
Now twice as gritty, twice as thrilling, and twice as thought-provoking.
Also twice as much sex, but we'll get to that in a minute.
This book gave me a lot to think about. In fact, while I've found all of Jeffrey Bardwell's books to be at least somewhat thought-provoking, this one takes the cake.
There are two issues at the heart of The Knight's Secret: gender and prejudice. Both are beautifully illustrated in the way the story unfolds, and both feel extremely relevant right now. So I'm going to talk about them.
The gender divide
Our hero is a girl (Kelsa) -- disguised as a man. This isn't just a Shakespeare in Love situation; Kelsa is under a (voluntary) enchantment that makes her look and talk like her recently deceased grandfather, Sir Corbin Destrus. The longer she spends in his body, the more she begins to think and act like him, until it seems Corbin may have taken over entirely. But not quite.
Elsewhere, we have an empress who's just taken over from her deceased father. Wow -- wait. Didn't even think about that parallel until I wrote that sentence just now. Cool.
We've also got Maven: a mage and Corbin's former lover; and Drake: an old warrior and Corbin's best friend.
Of course, there are plenty of other characters as well, and the gender divide plays out on smaller scales in all of them, notably in Kelsa's mother and father.
OK it's time to talk about sex.
So like, yeah, having sex with the woman who may or may not be your grandmother is super awkward. But like, Kelsa seems to have no problem with it so.... whateves.
(This is where I point out that this book is PG-13. Like, it wasn't super graphic or anything, but definitely there's some... stuff... going on.)
Here's one of the places we see the gender gap most clearly. It's a different experience for each gender: Corbin and Maven. But since Kelsa has experienced it from both sides, she picks up on that difference. Then she makes love to a woman the way she knows women want to be loved.
But it's not just in the bedroom that gender differences come to light. It's in the story of the Battle of Jerkum Pass, where two women and one man make a fatal mistake -- and no one but the three of them ever know the true story. It's in the plots and intrigues that swirl around the city -- to which men and women give different responses. It's in the way Drake and the empress treat Maven -- calling her a witch and disrespecting her at every turn -- when they treat Corbin with evident respect and deference.
And Kelsa? She's the bridge. Corbin and Kelsa in one, she brings the two genders together, just as she tries to bring the mages and soldiers together.
The mage prejudice
So I only realized this time through that this book takes place way before the events of The Artifice Mage saga. (I mean, there's literally the year at the beginning of every chapter so IDK how I missed that, just unobservant apparently.) Once I realized that, I was excited to see things like the mage detectors and the Black Guards coming into being, because those are already mainstays of Devin's world in The Artifice Mage saga. But enough plugs.
Just as there's a divide between men and women, there's a growing divide between the soldiers and the mages of the Imperial Army. While they're still on fairly good terms (depending on who you ask though, really), there's definitely tension in the room -- and it's building.
It doesn't help that the empress seems determined to ramp up that tension for her own purposes. But just as she tries to bridge the gap between men and women, Kelsa tries to hold fast the growing divide in the army.
So maybe there's only one issue at the heart of this book after all. It's about more than just the gender gap or societal prejudice. (Though those are pretty big issues in themselves.)
In other words, it's not the difference itself that's the issue. 'Cause there will always be differences, whether they're differences of gender, ability, race, class, you name it. It's not hard to find the differences. It's hard to find the similarities.
And what this is all about is that we hone in on the ways we differ when we should hone in on the things we share.
That's The Knight's Secret.
And now that I'm in real danger of waxing too poetical, I'll wrap up. Thank you Jeffrey Bardwell, as always, for another rousing, darkly fascinating adventure. I look forward to sharing the next part of Kelsa's journey. And I look forward to sharing more literary travels with all you lovely readers, because at the end of the day, that's why we read, isn't it? To know we're not alone.
Rating:
Until tomorrow.
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