An Honorable Followup: A Review of Honor’s Knight

Honor’s Knight (2014)
Written By: Rachel Bach
Genre: Science Fiction
Pages: 374 (Trade Paperback)
Series: Paradox Book 2
Publisher: Orbit

Why I Chose It: It’s the next in the series? My motives are not that complicated.

The Premise:

Devi Morris has a lot of problems. And not the fun, easy-to-shoot kind either.

After a mysterious attack left her short several memories and one partner, she’s determined to keep her head down, do her job, and get on with her life. But even though Devi’s not actually looking for it — trouble keeps finding her. She sees things no one else can, the black stain on her hands is growing, and she is entangled with the cook she’s supposed to hate.

But when a deadly crisis exposes far more of the truth than she bargained for, Devi discovers there’s worse fates than being shot, and sometimes the only people you can trust are the ones who want you dead.

No Spoilers

Discussion: I usually like the second book in a trilogy the least. They tend to drag, the conflict gets boring before it gets interesting again, and the main character doesn’t usually grow as much as in the first and third books. But none of that was the case for Honor’s Knight. In fact, Rachel Bach improved on everything I liked about the first book — kick ass characters, awesome fight scenes, intriguing mysteries, and lovely sexual tension — and then she fixed the things I didn’t really like in Fortune’s Pawn. A win-win. Well done, Bach.

Given the twist at the end of the first book, I expected the transition into the second to be a little slow, as if everything went back to square one. But Bach puts the reader in the position of knowing more than the protagonist and uses that tension brilliantly to keep us waiting for everything to explode. And she didn’t string us out waiting for that explosion for too long either. There was a nice build up before the fiery conflict that finally led to answers. Wonderful answers.

One of my biggest hang-ups with the first book was the ratio of unanswered questions to answered ones, which was skewed way too heavily toward the unanswered side. But this book was where we achieved some balance. We finally learn what’s really going on with Devi, why Caldswell is so shifty, and just how big the whole situation is. (It’s big, by the way. Like planet-sized big.) And the best part of it all? Now that everyone’s on the same page, Devi can finally start doing something about it. Which is what she’s good at.

I felt like that helped make Devi into a better character. Now that she knows what she’s up against, she can grow to meet it. She had so much more nuance to her motives and emotions, which matched the layered conflict she found herself facing. I was proud of her by the end for entirely new reasons instead of for just the same bullheadedness that got her through the first book.

And Devi wasn’t the only character to get more depth and definition. Caldswell turned out to be wonderfully complex with his own motives and badassness. And now that I’ve got some backstory on Rupert, I am perfectly happy to fall in love with him alongside Devi. Especially now their relationship is so…complicated. Yeah, let’s call it complicated.

And you know the best difference between this book and the first one? It ended. There was actually a resolution and an ending with enough secrets left over to keep me coming back to the series but not enough to make me mad. A great way to end a book. The epic boss battle probably helped too.

In Conclusion: If the third book is as good as this one, this series will become one of my favorites. I’m looking forward to finding out how it ends. Now go away, I have a trilogy to finish.