I suppose it's not a spoiler to say the main character of a trilogy narrated in the first person survived the first book, and probably not a spoiler to say he survives this one, too. (The third book, Lord Quillifer, was published in 2022, and I suspect he survives to the end of that one as well.)
Quillifer the Knight takes place three years after Quillifer; our hero has settled into his new life as a part-owner of several ships and a very minor noble of Duisland. It begins with him returning on one of his ships from a successful voyage to somewhat distant lands - not on the map, at least - with a valuable cargo, but mostly takes place in the capital of Howell and among the scheming factions of the court.
Here's the one big spoiler for Quillifer: in the middle of that book, Quillifer was saved by, but then scorned - from her point of view - the goddess Orlanda. She then vowed to ruin his life - though he managed to get her to promise not to directly harm him or anyone he loves. So he is always expecting conspiracies and schemes to attack him - and they do occur regularly, since it doesn't take much goading from a goddess to get rich and established noble families to dislike a butcher's son turned knight.
To be clear, Quillifer would likely run into a fair bit of that scorn and scheming anyway: he's smart and cocky and wants to rise faster and further than a lot of this world is comfortable with. He's also young and attractive, bagging several wives - none of them his own - during the course of this book, which is the kind of thing that also will tend to create enemies.
He tells this story in first person, so we're on his side - you can imagine a story from other perspectives in which he would not be as sympathetic a hero. He is a lovable rogue, mostly on the side of right as we modern readers would see it - inclined to justice and freedom of commerce (so he can make more money) and people being able to live their own lives.
Knight covers a lot of ground, and more than a year of time - Walter Jon Williams structures this book, as he did the first one, as if Quillifer was telling this story to one of his lovers, presumably in bed, after certain activities. (Williams isn't fiddly about it, but it's clearly the record of many such conversations, over a long period of time - he never lets the story-as-told become a separate timeline to keep track of besides the story-that-happened, but that potential gap is there, and becomes important at the very end. It also becomes important who he is telling the story to, but I'll leave that for each reader to discover.) Williams ends up skipping over a lot of plot-important events that Quillifer is not there to witness - this is his story, so it focuses on what he does and sees and accomplishes.
I liked Quillifer as a character in the first book, and I like him just as much here. I also enjoyed the glimpses Williams gives us of the larger world: this seems to be an alternate Earth, with roughly similar planets but a very different Terran geography and only somewhat parallel history. For example, the big Empire was run by the Aekoi, another sapient humanoid race who are very similar to humans but not interfertile. And Duisland, the England-analog that is the center of the story, borders on Loretto, which is vaguely Italianate (or maybe Holy Roman Empire-ish). Duisland also stretches across the island of Fornland and the region of Bonille, which directly borders Loretto and seems to be on the mainland of this unnamed continent. So it could, perhaps, be seen as a version of England-plus-France, if you wanted to take it that way, though Fornland and Bonille seem to have been unified for a long time in this world.
The courtly maneuverings in this book center, of course, on Queen Berlauda of Duisland, in whose forces Quillifer served in the first book, helping to put down the rebellion of her bastard half-brother. This time out, she has married the son of the King of Loretto, Priscus, and raised him to co-ruler. Quillifer is loosely connected to the court of her younger sister, Floria, who is the heir only until Berlauda and Priscus have a child - and, after that, she may be entirely extraneous.
Matters get more complicated, as Loretto launches a war against their neighbor on the other side, dragging Duisland into the war. Loretto is more autocratic - in both their kings and their religion - and the this causes quite a lot of friction when Priscus places one of his stricter, blood-and-thunder countrymen as Viceroy Fosco, ruling over Duisland while Their Royal Highnesses are traveling in Loretto to support the war.
It gets yet more complicated than that, but I'll avoid talking about events later in the book - let me just say it all cooks up in ways you might expect, and ways you probably won't. Wars are random and destructive, particularly in a late medieval/early modern society like this one. We trust that Quillifer can make it through, and save the people he cares about - but he does have a goddess scheming against him, plus many more mundane enemies and rivals.
Knight is a little middle-book-ish, particularly in the ways Williams covers an entire war happening offstage. I didn't quite read it with the same rush I did the first book, but it's still easily the longest book I read this year, and I still very much enjoyed Quillifer's voice and exploits. I'm looking forward to the third one, and maybe, just maybe, finding time to catch up on the rest of Williams's books that I've missed the past few years.
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