This felt a lot like The Three Musketeers, and Dumas would have loved the main character. The incredibly competent, idealistic, and clever swordsman is a dead ringer for D'Artagnan, right down to his eventual disillusionment and amazing attractiveness to women. Good stuff. ( )

This review is written with a GPL 3.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at Bookstooge.booklikes.blogspot.wordpress.leafmarks.tumblr.com by express permission of this reviewer Title: Paragon Lost Series: A Chronicle of the King's Blades, King's Blades Author: Dave Duncan Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars Genre: SFF Pages: 348 Synopsis: Sir Beaumont heads up a special journey to get a new Queen for their King. And because of Politics and other bad things, completes the mission but loses all status and is kicked out of Iron Hall. And the story finishes with him really completing the Mission and getting it all back. My Thoughts: There are times where I hate Duncan's use of the split timeline. We start the book at the 2/3rds mark chronologically, get introduced to the situation, then immediately jump back to the beginning, hear about that, then jump to the resolution. It isn't nice neat segments though. But huge parts so you forget where you were or where you were heading. That is the main reason I took a star off. Other than that, this was a great King's Blades story. While it is a stand-alone story, you are definitely served by knowing the history of the previous 3 books in the series. Think European magic swordsmen in Russia. Messy, cold, brutal and lots of paranoia and fear. More about politics and international incidents than magic sword fighting though. Well, you can't win them all. " ( )

Dave Duncan is a little bit like Sir Beaumont, there is little that he does wrong. The pacing is perfection, the characters are lovable, likable or despicable, the world is well crafted and the plot is just plain fun. The world is done well enough to classify this as alternate history. You will easily recognize both lands and people who existed during our own medieval period, only with magic and of course, different names.

Full Review here:

Dragons, Heroes and Wizards ( )

Another fun adventure. ( )