I did Not like the first third of this book. I loved the last two thirds of this book.

I think I went into it expecting something else entirely, so the first third felt out of place. For whatever reason, I expected a grim and serious book about the fallout of a paladin's god dying (love the idea and will definitely be incorporating that into my D&D game), complete with drama and high stakes and appropriately dark and serious situations and characters. Instead, this book is more of a humorous fluffy rom-com about getting caught up in hijinks. Still complete with drama and high stakes and dark and serious situations and characters, just, with added longing and rom-com-typical misunderstandings. And it was good at all that. The constant horny longing in the first third or so did start to get a bit out of hand and repetitive but it was fine.

There's some really interesting and fun fantasy concepts in here: love the take on the occupation of perfumer, love the frustrating angst of "oh no i can't possibly kiss her what if I go berserk bc I'm a berserker paladin and the only thing that can stop a berserker paladin going berserk is another berserker paladin" (peak paladin behavior imo), love the different gods and temples portrayed, and love the batshit court processes. All the characters were fun, if not over the top, and the story was fun, if not over the top. But hey, when you view it through the lens of a rom-com, isn't it supposed to be over the top? If I had been told before starting that this book is an over the top rom-com in a dark fantasy world, I would have loved it start to finish. I'm all for over the top rom-coms in dark fantasy worlds.

A couple lines from the author's note at the end sums it up (minor spoilers): "I had it in my mind that I was going to write a fluffy romance. / I am told that there are generally fewer severed heads and

rotting corpse golems

in fluffy romance, so possibly this book didn't quite get there ..." I think it did it. I'm excited to read the rest of the series.