Intrigue, suspicion, and rivalry among the royal princes casts a shadow on the court of Owain, king of north Wales… The year is 1143 and King Owain seeks to unite his daughter in marriage with an allied king. But when the groom is murdered on the way to his wedding, the bride’s brother tasks his two best detectives—Gareth, a knight, and Gwen, the daughter of the court bard—with bringing the killer to justice. And once blame for the murder falls on Gareth himself, Gwen must continue her search for the truth alone, finding unlikely allies in foreign lands, and ultimately uncovering a conspiracy that will shake the political foundations of Wales.
The Good Knight is one of my Kindle books upgraded to audio. I wanted a bit of mystery, but also some history. This historical mystery seemed like a good choice.
It was an alright audio book. The narrator isn’t bad, but it took a while to get used to the accents and the names of the higher rung characters. Granted, that isn’t anyone’s fault. The book is set in medieval Wales, you can’t expect an Oscar instead of Owain.
The mystery itself was rather bland though. It was almost forgettable. The beginning observations from Gwen and Gareth were interesting and sounded true to the time period. Instead of fancy CSI work, they used good old fashion looking and listening skills. I liked the observations with the senses. It was realistic.
However, getting to the point of who the killer was wasn’t really all that grand. It felt as if the author wrote herself into a corner and decided to fix things up in a way that worked with both the historical aspect and gave her characters some solution.
This book was more about the politics of the time and Gwen’s relationship with Gareth. Both are equally interesting, but it seemed the murder took a backseat to everything else. It was well written though and the historical facts just made it to my “too much exposition” limit. Any more and I may have dropped the book entirely.
Would I read more of the series? Meh. I’m not so sure about that. I wasn’t too keen on the characters or the mystery enough to say I would be able to stick with the series.
Casia's Corner 