Jaguar Knights (A Chronicle of the King's Blades #3) (King's Blades #6)

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Title: Jaguar Knights
Series: King's Blades
Author: Dave Duncan
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: SFF
Pages: 400
Format: Hardcover

Synopsis:

An attack on an outpost in Chivial, where the former Royal Mistress resides, leads to her kidnapping. An apparently new kind of magic that even the Inquisitors haven't seen before leads to Sir Wolfe being sent on a mission to far away Txiltia. With an Inquisitor as a wife!
Mix in Sir Wolfe's brother, who was the Blade protecting the Royal Mistress and a world based on the Aztecs and you have tale that drags you along!

My Thoughts:

With this being my 6th, and final, King's Blades book, I have realized that Duncan seems to delight in telling a completely different tale with each story. He also seems to like turning characters from former books on their heads.

This was brutal on so many levels. The blood magic of the Txlitians was definitely human sacrifice, harvesting bloody hearts to perform incredible feats of magic. It turned my stomach even while not being gone into detail. Then near the end where Wolfe's wife dies. That cut! Duncan did a fantastic job of making Dolores and Wolfe a real thing.

I also had NO idea where the story was going, or what the end would be until I got there. It was good.