One Knight Stand: Lady’s Knight 2 & Interview with Amie Kaufman
By Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner
A & U Children 2026
Reviewed by Lucille Rose
One Knight Stand is the only dragon-fighting, sword-wielding, knight in shining armour series you will ever need. Set in a medieval fantasy kingdom, fierce noblewoman Isobelle and recently knighted Gwen continue their journey after Gwen’s defeat of the terrible dragon in Lady’s Knight. Now, Gwen and Isobelle, at the command of Isobelle’s guardian, Lord Whimsitt, are travelling the land, going to any town that screams ‘dragon!’, however hollow those screams might be.
At least Gwen and Isobelle can finally be together with nothing standing in their way. Well, nothing but the pesky nightmares that have been haunting Gwen’s every moment, but she’s a knight after all. Knights don’t get scared. And it’s not like Gwen’s the only one with secrets. Desperate to escape the clutches of her foul guardian, Isobelle writes to her estranged parents asking for her dowry, but her parents haven’t ever heard the words ‘female’ and ‘independence’ in the same sentence and are not inclined to heed their daughters request. These problems are bad enough, but when Lord Whimsett forces the pair to travel to the coastal town of Galanty-Upon-The-Sea to fight a sea monster, these problems get even worse. Will Gwen and Isobelle brave the stormy sea raging around them and cement their love?
One Knight Stand is a well-executed culmination of one-of-a-kind ideas and classic fantasy tropes. The use of the latter quickly established a familiar world, inviting the reader to relive the long-forgotten feelings fairytales and adventure stories gave them from a young age. This, mixed with more mature themes and intriguing adventures, created a place to experience an entirely new story in a familiar setting.
Isobelle’s character captures what so many other authors struggle to grasp: a main-stage, female heroine who blends femininity and ferocity in equal measure. She is independent, intelligent, and eminently capable of accessing her emotional side and using that compassion to better the world around her. Gwen is likewise brave, skilled and strong.
And finally, the romance, with a capital R. The relationship between Gwen and Isobelle is the most magical aspect of this fantasy novel. Their gentle, passionate communications, never-ending trust, and refusal to give up on each other even in their darkest moments, cemented them as a couple all readers will happily follow in what I’m sure will be fantastic sequels.
Amie Kaufman took time off from her busy schedule ( ‘I am the busiest woman on the planet right now, my PhD is due in a few weeks, I am also editing a book, and drafting a new one) to answer some questions from Lucille
The two main obstacles the characters tackle in the sequel are the mystery of Galanty-Uponne-the-Sea and the mistrust forming between Gwen and Isobelle, with the two problems often being intertwined. When setting out to write this book, was your main goal to establish the mystery, or was the mystery a tool to prompt change in the love interests’ relationship?
The way into this story was definitely the girls’ relationship—above all else, this is a story about Gwen and Isobelle, and a story about how they how they grow and learn (and mess up, and repair, and grow some more and learn some more!) together. The mystery was designed to bring up all the questions about ‘where next?’ in their relationship. The end of book one was triumphant, but they’re still ultimately living in the same world that caused all those problems, and we wanted to explore how they would deal with that.
The sequel takes us to an entirely different location than its predecessor. What prompted this change in scenery and was it nerve racking to take the story to new, undiscovered places?
We knew early on that we wanted to head away from the castle this time – this is a book about what happens next, and what happens after you’ve completed the quest, and to answer questions like that we wanted to be in a new environment. Fun fact – for a while we thought we were going to set this book in Spain! In the end, we realised that doing so meant that Gwen and Isobelle wouldn’t have their friends with them, and those female friendships are a big part of the way this series works. We also knew how many great joke there were to make about a seaside holiday!
When writing how Gwen and Isobelles’ relationship struggled in this new book, was it clear from the beginning what the obstacles to their happiness would be, or was there a deeper process involved in deciding what would be the barrier they grappled with?
Without getting too spoilery, we knew that the problems they had would grow from who they were in the first book—Gwen’s need for independence and belief that she has to do things on her own, and Isobelle’s belief that she can fix everything if she just tries hard enough. Nobody completely changes in such a short time. We wanted to be clear that they’re very much in love, and that this is two people who are committed to a relationship struggling inside it, rather than two people who don’t know if they want to make it work. Of course, all this makes the book sound very serious, when it’s one of the funniest things we’ve ever written!
Amie, thank you so much for talking to StoryLinks. Find out more about her and her books on her website.
Other books by Amie Kaufman reviewed in StoryLinks
