Book Review: Of Deeds Most Valiant by Sarah K.L. Wilson

Any author that writes about paladins has already won brownie points with me, such is my boundless adoration for the archetype, regardless of what influences it draws from. Yet despite Sarah K.L. Wilson having me in her corner from page 1, I felt that this book ultimately squandered its readability, trading good pacing and tight plotting for insta-love romance, quirky humour and a bloated cast of shallow characters.

 The book starts off with an explosive kick, setting up one of the book’s core character dynamics between Victoria and her dog, while packing in a steady mix of worldbuilding and intrigue. While I initially had reservations about the very modern ‘meta’ style humour, and how frequently it interjected itself into the story, I otherwise found the earlier chapters gripping, accomplishing a lot in a very short amount of time.

 Yet as this book proceeded, more characters were added, and the scope of the story expanded, I found that what was working slowly got taken over by what didn’t. As it turns out, too many paladins does spoil the cup. There simply wasn’t enough space in the book to handle the tonal whiplash of going from comedy to abstract horror from one page to the next, or for the excessively large cast to become anything more than hollow puppets to progress things along.

 At every turn I wanted to learn more about the world, and get to know the characters in more detail, but the book traded page space off for elements that accomplished the opposite. Issues like the humour and narrative style will largely come down to reader preference, so it’s definitely not a book without appeal, but given my pre-reading excitement, I can’t downplay my disappointment over it.

 The author states that Of Deeds Most Valient was heavily influenced by Tamsyn Muir’s Gideon the Ninth, and given that was a book I dropped out of dislike, it might track that I didn’t like this either. So, if you’re reading this thinking “but I LOVED Gideon the Ninth”, then feel free to disregard my misgivings in this review, and if you are just a fan of fantasy romance with insta-love, then this might actually be a must-try.