That does feel a bit mean to say, but honestly it feels like Knightley had a certain view (or, a certain work) that was going to be fit into the confines of new IP. But that means we’ve got a lot of wood to chop to learn about seith, the order of assassins Fyren who shadow-walk to gleeful murder, the Healer Haelen who wears all buttoned-up white and needs funding to help sick orphans, other orders who do things that are vaguely alluded to, lots of kings and queens, these Patronuses-slash-daemons deyfols (sp?) that people can manifest and use as messengers, and it’s all just too much given that the main point of this story is meant to be the VERY slow burn romance between our two main characters, Aurienne and Osric.
And I suppose that’s the issue, is that I’m not sure all the extra bits around the story were needed in order to set up the romance of our main characters, and in some cases are actually a bit of a detraction? Aurienne’s got these unshakeable morals around what Osric does–murder for hire without questions–but then is totes magotes fine with using his skills if it furthers her ambitions (which are, admittedly, very wholesome and pure around the aforementioned ragamuffin urchins who are dying of a Pox). It’s inevitable, of course, because we have to move these two chess pieces closer together and it’s not possible from where they stand at the outset.
I can’t name them, but this concept of “codified murder for hire” has been tried before and always feels a bit iffy…perhaps because we, as a society, don’t really have this system? (I mean, we implicitly do, see: policing, wars that aren’t wars, weaponized starvation, but the straight forward hiring of assassins by non-governmental actors is usually a no-no) So it’s hard to really empathize with Osric, even though he has a Sad Background and Trauma, because such Trauma can be dealt with in any manner of healthy ways.
Anytime we move away from the complicated politics of it all, there’s some fun bits to be found when our characters interact with third parties and with one another. Aurienne and her family, and in particular her family’s genial acceptance of her various Friends showing up (and eventually being kindly broken up with) was riotous for some reason I could not explain. Osric being incapable of finding adult dressing robes in every out-of-the-way clinic for increasingly specific diseases of a mild sexual nature, also worth a chuckle. Their interactions follow a very prescribed STRONG ENEMIES to fondness trope that I can’t say was entirely warranted but wasn’t mad about either.
But a fair warning that this is SLOW in the extreme, we don’t even end with anything other than the realization that he has fallen, so if you read this you are fully committed to reading the follow up as well, a year later, at which point I will certainly have forgotten many of these details.