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Review: Daggerbound, by T. Kingfisher

Series:	Swordheart #2
Publisher:	Bramble
Copyright:	2026
ISBN:	1-250-40009-0
Format:	Kindle
Pages:	436

Daggerbound is a secondary-world fantasy and a sequel to Swordheart, although it follows different protagonists for most of the book. It's also a sort of sequel to the Clocktaur War duology in that one of the protagonists was a protagonist of those books. T. Kingfisher is the pen name Ursula Vernon uses for her adult fiction.

Learned Edmond was once a devout acolyte of the Order of the Many-Armed God and a true believer in its teachings, including the ones about the evils of women. Then he went on an adventure with, among other people, a forger named Mistress Slate, during which he learned a great deal of things about the world that his order did not teach him. He has spent the subsequent years trying to bring this important new information to his order and encourage them to adjust their view of the world accordingly.

The order has not changed, and Edmond is very tired.

Someone needs to carry a number of books and a magical sword to the city of Archon's Glory. Edmond has volunteered and intends to perform the task exactly as expected, and then never return. He is unsure what he will do then, but at least it will be different.

Edmond did not expect to be waylaid by bandits or to accidentally draw the magical sword. He certainly did not expect the man who appeared in a flash of light and violently saved him from the bandits.

It would have been very convenient for the Dervish if Edmond died of his injuries after drawing the sword. That would leave the sword without a wielder and therefore the Dervish without someone he had to protect. All he would have to do was sit and watch while the fever and cold and lack of water did the work, and then he would be free. Given his past experience with wielders, no one could even blame him. Except maybe his own conscience.

I did not realize I wanted to read a novel about a traumatized Mercedes Lackey sword waking up in a T. Kingfisher universe, but apparently I did.

The Dervish is not a sword, precisely, at least not in the way that Need has become by the time we meet her in Lackey's novels. He's a man trapped in a sword, he doesn't like it, and he would very much like it to stop. But at the start of the book, he has the rest of the vibe of a Mercedes Lackey protagonist: vast past trauma, poor emotional regulation skills, and a prickly cynicism that only runs skin deep. Pairing him with an Edmund who is far more mature than in the earlier duology but still rather innocent and delightfully neurodivergent is a great touch.

The rest of the plot was fine but not that memorable. Like the Clocktaur series, there is a strong feeling of episodic D&D adventure as the characters stumble across disconnected problems and hostilities while collecting party members. Like Ursula Vernon's occasional D&D recaps, this party has a tendency to adopt everyone they come in contact with, which includes a gnole (as always one of the best parts of the book) and a sentient giant pill bug. The pill bug, who has a complex appendage-operated mechanical talk box and a banner that says "I DO NOT EAT HUMAN MEAT," is the most Ursula Vernon character that has ever existed in fiction.

There is a romance because there is always a romance in the novels set in this universe. I didn't mind this one. Like every Kingfisher romance, it involves a lot of irritating refusal to communicate and endless angst about how the other person couldn't possibly be in love with them, but the characters have rather more justification than usual and at least I didn't spend most of the book thinking one half of the romantic pairing was an idiot. Apparently it helps if no paladins are involved.

The strongest parts of this book are the beginning, before the Lackey vibes unfortunately drain out of the story, and the end, when all of the best characters from Swordheart show up again. The Temple of the White Rat continues to be the best feature of this fictional universe, and I could read endless books about how they solve problems.

The Dervish gazed at her with admiration. "And here I thought you'd be on the side of law and order..."

"No, young man," said Beartongue, despite being several centuries his junior. "I am on the side of justice. If we're lucky, the two run in parallel. If they don't, we bend the law to attain justice, not the other way around."

The ending also featured some exploration of the edge cases of the rules for the sentient swords that reminded me a bit of Fred Saberhagen with better characterization.

Daggerbound was not as charming as Swordheart, mostly because Halla appeared only at the end. I wish Kingfisher had leaned more into the Mercedes Lackey vibes rather than taking her normal D&D-flavored romance approach. But this was enjoyable, charming at times, had great supporting characters like all Kingfisher novels, and was a satisfying continuation of the series. I am looking forward to the third (and I believe final) book, which is supposed to be out next year.

Recommended if you liked Swordheart.

Followed by the not-yet-published Shieldborn.

Rating: 7 out of 10

11 Oct 2026 4:48am GMT

A variation of the pattern from yesterday; say you have:

if (x == 3) {
    y = 0;
} else {
    y = 1;
}

When these are zero and one, sometimes this will give a better match, since booleans are evaluated as such:

y = (x != 3);

It's rare to have something else than zero or one work for this pattern (e.g. you would rarely write y = (x != 3) * 2 + 1).

10 Oct 2026 6:45pm GMT

For over ten years, the only way I have had of knowing what our solar panels are doing has been an impulse monitor on the generation meter, counting the flashes of its LED. It has always been a bit flaky due to battery changes or loose connections, and there has never been a way to see solar generation alongside the energy used by the rest of the house. This week I have fixed that, by building a small ESPHome sensor which talks directly to the inverter. I am still reeling slightly: with AI assistance, it took under a week from idea to working implementation, and it is a project I would certainly never have attempted otherwise. The result is zeversolar-esphome.

The inverter is a Zeversolar Zeverlution 3680, which has an RS485 port but no Wi-Fi or Ethernet module. It doesn't speak Modbus; it uses Eversolar's own master/slave protocol, which nobody has officially documented but which several people have reverse-engineered over the years (credit to eversolar-monitor, Heliograph and others). Manufacturer support for Eversolar/Zeversolar inverters apparently ended in December 2019 when the company went out of business.

The rating plate on my inverter.

A while ago I had looked into what ports were available on this inverter with a view to connecting some sort of monitoring, but I had abandoned it as "too hard". While working on some Home Assistant configuration, Claude suggested the idea again, but similarly wrote it off initially. I encouraged it to explore a bit further, and supplied the model number of the inverter, at which point the picture got a lot more promising. After a bit of back-and-forth about hardware, we settled on an M5Stack Atom Lite on an Atomic RS485 Base. The main attraction was that it already comes in a case, so I didn't need to design (or, more likely, bodge) an enclosure.

While I waited for the parts to arrive, Claude wrote the firmware: an ESPHome external component built around a small, dependency-free C++ driver, with host-side unit tests against byte captures that other people had published from other models. I found it slightly surreal to have a tested protocol driver before owning any hardware to run it on.

Cables

The parts came before the tools I needed to get into the inverter safely (a DC clamp meter and a T25 screwdriver bit), so in the meantime I made up an RS485 cable - this uses an RJ45 connection at one end, and some custom wiring at the other. My first attempt was with some CAT 6, but (as Claude had pointed out and I had ignored) its solid-core conductors are much harder to twist together. So I gave up and sacrificed an old CAT 5e patch lead instead, which went much better.

The custom end of the cable, before being taped up.

The risky bit

On a Zeverlution, the RJ45 sockets are inside the wiring compartment, which means taking the cover off to install the monitor. The manual addresses this part to qualified electricians. So the step I was most nervous about was not the software at all, but safely isolating the inverter.

Inside the inverter, with the cover off.

I did this with appropriate caution, following the instructions from the manual carefully, and also waiting until after dark just in case. Now that I understand how the DC clips from the panels work, I can see how to do this safely during daytime too - but hopefully this won't be necessary.

Plugged in, and threaded through the cable gland.

Warning: if you're not confident, I would always advise to get an electrician to do this bit. Do what I say, not what I do.

Debugging over Wi-Fi

Once the device was installed, the nice thing about ESPHome is that I never need to go back in the loft again to update it - it reflashes over Wi-Fi. I've taken full advantage of this for debugging, and for reading the wire protocol directly from the logs.

The finished device. Green means generating.

Separately, I've used Claude to integrate the new sensors into Home Assistant. Solar generation finally sits in the Energy dashboard next to the rest of the house's usage, which was the whole point.

Reflections

This was a fun, quick project, and it solved a problem that has eluded me for a decade. I want to be honest about how much of that is down to the AI: I would not have attempted any of this on my own. I could not have told you the protocol existed, never mind implemented it. My contribution was everything involving a screwdriver, and ordering some hardware.

10 Oct 2026 11:00am GMT