SPOILERS AHEAD FOR EVERY PREVIOUS CHAPTER OF THE ZOMBIE KNIGHT!!!!PLEASE DON"T SPOIL YOURSELF!!!!
At the end of the Seventh Oath of The Zombie Knight, the focus was squarely on the goings on in Sair. Marcos was killed in Mariana's spectacular fight with a Vanguard goon squad, and Emiliana, who was on the verge of being allowed to live a normal life, manifest permanent physical mutations when her family is attacked. The Eighth Oath starts out with Mariana's attempts find a reaper to resurrect Marcos before his soul deteriorates and Emiliana's reaction to the fact that she isn't going to be able to fit into normal society since she now has a monstrous appearance. After a brief stay with the Elroy family, the focus of the oath shifts back to Hector.
He's now patrolling the area around his castle by night and repairing it by day. He's also experimenting with using his power to travel, which is funny and pretty awesome, and I hope is leading to some more really imaginative uses of power in the future. We also get to see some of the public's reaction to Hector. His mom Vanessa is continuing to develop as quite an interesting character. And we start to get a few hints about how the two story lines are going to converge, both in some interesting facts that are revealed about some characters we've been following, and especially when Lynn shows up on Hector's door asking for some help on a mission the queen has sent her on. And if you've been wondering if there are any drawbacks to using an aberration bone gauntlet, we start to get some clues about that from Harper.
I was thinking about knocking this oath a point for not having any big fight scenes, but it is such a joy to read. And The Zombie Knight is not all about the fighting either. Its greatness is thanks in big-part to how engaging and interesting it is even when things aren't going crazy. There is also a scene or two in this oath that wouldn't work in other writings. Some scenes seem like they are immature or something. But in The Zombie Knight, I know that these scenes are well considered and thought out and that everything that's happening is supposed to come off the way it does. In this oath, there was an instance where I didn't quite get why something was in a scene, and would have written it off as bad writing in another story. But knowing how smart George Frost is, I went with it, and found some great thematic reasons why said scene occurred. Just like a rock band that you know is great can do a song that you might not like otherwise, The Zombie Knight has enough cred that you can trust it and go with it and it will all work out. That's why this oath gets a perfect score too!
