The story picks up four months after the events of the previous book. Devlin has spent those months trying to shore-up the defenses of the Kingdom of Jorsk against the threats that he feels are imminent. Unfortunately, he hasn't had that much success and every attempt at strengthening the kingdom is a struggle due partly to the usual power plays and politics you see in most any fantasy novel, but with the added invective that Devlin is still looked down upon because he's a member of a conquered people and not a Jorskian. He later discovers via one of his few friends, the minstrel Stephen, that his very status as Chosen is questioned in the Jorsk circles of power because he lacks the Sword of Light (the sword on the covers of all three books and a pretty accurate description to boot).
The Sword of Light is one of the badges of office of the Chosen, but was lost during the conquest of Duncaer, Devlin's homeland. We get a brief rundown of how the conquest happened: Basically, the Caerfolk practiced a form of elective monarchy where a woman would be elected queen for a term, then either re-elected or replaced with another queen when their first term ended. Duncaer's final queen was a two-termer who wasn't going to get a third and so she went full asshole and "invited" the Jorskian army for a *ahem* visit. It's explained that only one city, Ynnis (or Yniss, I can't remember the proper spelling) resisted the invasion. That's not because the Caerfolk were a docile people but because the rest of the country was more focused on waging a bloodfeud against this queen and her entire family tree. And man, I'm not even exaggerating about that. Caerfolk are dead serious when it comes to blood feuds and the resulting conflict really didn't end until every single member of Queen Asshole's family going as far as distant relations were six feet under.
So anyways, the city of Ynnis resisted. If I remember correctly, they lured the Chosen One at the time into the city under the false pretext of wanting to negotiate and then killed him and his entourage. Needless to say, the Jorskians retaliated by going full Carthage and reducing the city to rubble. The sword was never recovered and deemed lost.
Except Devlin knows exactly where it is because not only has he seen it, but has actually held the sword. He doesn't realize this until he sees the sword in a painting. The master blacksmith he was apprenticed to as a young man had the sword displayed in his smithy and would use it as an example of master craftsmanship.
So Devlin knows where the Sword of Light is, but the prospect of retrieving it is not something he's looking forward to because it means returning to Duncaer. For those who don't recall, it's stated in Devlin's Luck that our hero is what's called kin-bereft, which is a form of exile where unique to the Caerfolk. Their society is made up of a spiderweb of connections based on family and relations, so to be declared kin-bereft is to be not only disowned by your family, but by all your countrymen to the extent that all are forbidden from giving any kind of aid to you and you can be killed on sight if found still within Duncaer. But for Devlin, it's not just that he's kin-bereft, but that he's still haunted by the deaths of his wife, child, his brother (his wife is the one who declared Devlin kin-bereft), and nephew who were all killed by creatures called banecats and that he blames himself for.
Still, he has no choice but to go. The geas - the magical spell that binds all Chosen Ones to their duty - doesn't give him a choice on the matter, so he sets off with Stephen and Lieutenant Didrik to recover the sword. Just one snag, though: Devlin appears to be slowly going insane. It all starts when he performs a special ceremony that Caerfolk typically perform to honor their dead during midwinter. During the ceremony, Devlin sees first the ghost of his dead wife, then what appears to be the manifestation of Lord Haakon, the God of the Dead. From then on, Devlin is haunted by the Haakon apparition who claims that Devlin will kill his friends, lose his mind, and die without honor or some such. Of course, no one else can see Haakon, so Devlin's friends and allies worry that he's going mad.
From there, things just go downhill. The Sword of Light is discovered stolen by a group of rebels who demand the withdrawal of all Jorskian forces from Duncaer and restoration of its independence in return for the sword, which is obviously an impossible demand. This storyline makes up the bulk of Devlin's Honor and unfortunately, is kind of meh because while it follows Devlin, the city police, and the occupation forces in their attempts to hunt down this sword and that should sound exciting, it's rather bland because it focuses instead on Devlin's continued descent into madness.
One bright spot though is when Devlin meets his former best friend and the encounter ends with him being basically adopted into his family, meaning that he's no longer kin-bereft. We also learn why he was in the first place. Devlin went after the banecats that killed his family and killed them in kind, but was so badly injured in the process (he has huge and ugly scars all over his chest and back) that he wasn't able to perform that midwinter ceremony that I mentioned earlier, and somehow his sister-in-law decided to make a massive deal out of it and declared him such.
Things eventually start turning up Milhouse, however. Devlin's electric slide towards insanity is revealed by a witch to be a mind spell. As it turns out, when Caerfolk perform that midwinter ceremony, they open their minds up completely, which allowed a sorcerer, possibly the same one who tried to kill him in the first book, to hit him with a mental whammy and since Devlin lost consciousness before he could end the ceremony, his mind is still open. With the aid of the witch, Devlin and Stephen redo the ceremony and break the spell.
Not surprisingly, they also manage to recover the Sword of Light and defeat the rebel cell that was holding it. What's interesting there is that despite his maimed hand (courtesy of his duel at the end of the first book), the sword fits it like a glove. Oh, and Sword of Light lives up to its name and glows when Devlin gets a hold of it.
Devlin's Honor isn't a terrible book, it's not even bad, but compared to Devlin's Luck, it's only average. I would still recommend it because it does add to the plot and backstory of the trilogy.
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