T. Kingfisher’s Paladin’s Faith is the fourth book in her Saint of Steel series (a.k.a. the Paladin’s Noun series), which is itself set in the same secondary world as a few other novels, all of which I have read and none of which I have booklogged.
The novels that established this world are the Clocktaur War duology, Clockwork Boys and The Wonder Engine. [*] As I read them, I was intensely reminded of the worldbuilding in the Doctrine of Labyrinths series, for the elaborately scary possibly-sentient machines; Discworld, for the gnoles; and Chalion, for the demons. This was unfortunately distracting.
[*] They were followed by the as-yet-standalone Swordheart, which has clear hooks for two sequels.
I also do not vibe with the way that Kingfisher writes romance here—all of the books in this world are romance novels—as the principal obstacle tends to be self-loathing and low self-esteem, which gets very same-y after really not very many books. (I originally theorized that I did not vibe with the way that she wrote het romance, because I did quite like the f/f romance in The Raven and the Reindeer; but the third book in the Saint of Steel series is m/m and I had the same reaction. Maybe it’s just romance involving dudes? There’s three books left in this series and two of them will be about female paladins; one of those seems likely to be het, but I’ll hold out hope for the other.)
Anyway, that’s two paragraphs about what I find suboptimal about the books in this world and yet I have in fact read all of them. Kingfisher (who is also Ursula Vernon) does great action, humor, and competence porn (especially in her side characters), and she has a knack for the little things in the worldbuilding that make it still enjoyable even while it reminds me of lots of other things.
Paladin’s Faith is, as I’ve indicated, halfway through the seven-book Saint of Steel series, and it feels like where the series as a series really hits its stride. The Saint of Steel was a god (yes, despite the name) who called berserkers to his service, the paladins of the book’s titles. Then he died. Only seven of his paladins survived; they all now serve the Temple of the White Rat, which (as this book says) "solved problems. That was their god’s entire purview. They were staffed with lawyers, social workers, healers, and organizers." (In fact, I recommended the books on an Arisia panel about laws, lawyers, and trials.)
The first two books were connected by a secondary plot, while the third book felt more like a standalone adventure except for a last-page drop of unexpected information about the wider world. Faith doesn’t follow directly on that ending, but it brings back a character from the first book, resolves a lingering issue from the second, pointedly updates us on the status of the characters from the Clocktaur War duology, and sets up what is clearly going to be part of the series endgame. Some people have felt that this is kind of a lot for one book to do. And that’s entirely reasonable, but I actually liked it: it said to me, okay, this series is going carry across plotlines both in the short term—by having them show up in just a couple of the books—and in the long—by definitely having an overall plot for the full series, which it certainly didn’t have to. I can’t wholeheartedly love these books, but I definitely do enjoy them.