What Moves the Dead (Sworn Soldier, #1)

by T. Kingfisher

I am delighted by obscure passions, no matter how unusual. During the war, I was once holed up in a shepherd’s cottage, listening for the enemy to come up the hillside, when the shepherd launched into an impassioned diatribe on the finer points of sheep breeding that rivaled any sermon I have ever heard in my life.

(I am never sure what to think of Americans. Their brashness can be charming, but just when I decide that I rather like them, I meet one that I wish would go back to America, and then perhaps keep going off the far edge, into the sea.)

You show up to basic training and they hand you a sword and a new set of pronouns.

Sometimes it’s hard to know if someone is insulting or just an American.

Damnable English language—more words than anybody can be expected to keep track of, and then they use the same one for about three different things.