Estelle spent most of her life defying gender norms. As an orphaned girl, she wanted to be in a position to protect rather than be protected, and to that end, she became one of her country's first lady knights. She continued her rise to the top, proving all of her naysayers wrong, until, one fateful day, one of her subordinates decided to end her life. The last thing Estelle remembers was him running her through…and then she wakes up in an unfamiliar bed and body.

While I would hesitate to say that From a Knight to a Lady is a capital-G-gender series, it certainly lays enough groundwork for that to be a significant piece of the overall puzzle. Estelle, who as a knight was very masc-presenting, prided herself on breaking through a glass ceiling. To learn that not only was she betrayed, but her legacy was tarred with a sexist brush – popular lore being that she was killed because she was mad due to her unwomanly profession – is both infuriating and disheartening. And when she finds out that she's now living in the body of a frail, feminine young lady? She's not quite sure what to make of it.

Estelle's transformation into Luci (which is how I'll refer to her to differentiate her from the original owner of the body, Lucifela) is fraught in several ways. For one, she's now got physical limitations she never experienced, because Lucifela was raised as a lady and therefore didn't learn to fight or to build her physical strength. As Luci, she's also treated very differently, and that's uncomfortable – instead of being self-made, she's given deference because of her rank, and that Lucifela was apparently a bit of a tyrant to work for certainly doesn't help matters. But mostly Luci is upset by what happened: after her death as Estelle, not only did her country lose the war, her elite unit became reviled to the point that one of her subordinates is now the suspect in a Jack the Ripper-style serial killing. To say that everything she worked for turned to ash might be understating how Luci feels. The plot, therefore, isn't just about Luci learning to cope with her new body and station. She has unfinished business and no desire to marry as dictated, and be a lovely ornament. Luci is going to pick up where Estelle left off.

In this volume, much of that has to do with the aforementioned serial killer. Known as “The Butcher” for the messages he leaves scrawled in blood at his crime scenes, the presumed man only murders women. The king, understandably upset, sets the heads of two of his knightly orders on the case, one of whom is Luci's fiancé. But when the other knight suggests that the killer may be one of Luci's men from her previous life, she decides to throw herself into the ring as well. Not only does she not want him to be charged with a crime she knows he couldn't commit, but she also thinks it might lead her to her betrayer.

While Luci's actions do verge on the stupid, it's not because she doesn't know what she's doing. Lucifela's body may not be the precision instrument Estelle's was, but Luci still retains all of her skills and knowledge. Armed, she's more than capable of defending herself, and her brain's as sharp as her blade. Her mistakes amount to more being blinded by desperation and forgetting that, as Luci, she doesn't exactly inspire fear. But she does have the intelligence to turn bad situations around. Luci's actions are an excellent example of working with what you have, and this storyline really shows how adaptable she is. She can play the damsel in distress if she has to, but she sees no reason why she shouldn't do the saving herself, Lucifela's body be damned.

It's also an interesting proposition because the Lucifela Luci thinks she's figured out, but soon turns out to be rather different. Although Lucifela seems to be dead, drowned in the palace lake in an apparent suicide, some of her memories linger in her mind and body. Luci can access those occasionally, and they suggest that Lucifela was taken advantage of and betrayed in a similar way to Estelle. Luci's mission, therefore, becomes greater than just her own situation; she's the woman who will take back what other women lost and rewrite the narrative. Both Estelle's and Lucifela's stories were taken from them by men. Luci, even if she's not thinking in those terms, will rectify the situation.

Crossed Hearts' edition of this book is as good as the story. Both regular and special editions have French flaps, and there are two fold-out pinups concealed within the book, so if you think you've found an uncut page, don't run for the scissors. The special edition also comes with a Tarot card of Luci. The book also includes journal pages that can be scanned or copied and printed to create your own From a Knight to a Lady diary, which is a great use of what would otherwise be blank pages in the book.

From a Knight to a Lady starts a bit slow, but it's more than worth sticking with. As Luci adapts to her situation and we learn more about the political situation – not to mention her fiancé Zedekiah and Louis Luke – the harder it is to put it down.