4 out of 5 Stars
I enjoyed this book quite a bit. The story is immensely entertaining and keeps your mind working to try to figure out what is going on. I must say that it took me a while to settle into the setting of the book. This is the first fantasy book that keeps close to christian religion. It kinda threw me for a bit. I wasn’t expecting God and Saints to be mentioned and thought I had stumbled into a historical fiction book. But then magic came and I got lost. So, when you read this, I’d suggest going into it with that tidbit in mind. Once I got over it and stopped trying to tie it into what I know of religion, I read much faster and enjoyed it way more.
The magic in The Red Knight was interesting and I enjoyed how Cameron presented it when the characters were using it (there’s a format change that helps the reader know). It was explained well enough, but has plenty of room to grow, and as the book progresses we continue to learn more. Loved that.
There were several POV’s in this book. I’ve said it before: I enjoy multiple POV’s. However, The Red Knight had one too many for my taste. I can understand why Cameron added them. Everything comes together in the end and if you didn’t have those POVs the story wouldn’t be as engaging. They are needed, but I must admit I grew rather bored during some of them.
The Red Knight, or Captain, was my favorite character. Cameron did a incredible job giving the reader tidbits of delightful information about the Captain throughout the book. By the end, I think I figured it out, but there is obviously room for more clarification and to prove me wrong. Furthermore, there is enough left open that the next book is sure to have the same delightful hints sprinkled throughout. This was my favorite part about the book, thus why the Red Knight is my favorite character. It was like watching condensation evaporate on a window. Sauce and Bad Tom were also entertaining and I enjoyed their POVs. I was indifferent to the rest.
I very much enjoyed the cast of creatures used in this book. And we even got a POV from a handful of them to show how the opposite side thinks and feels.
There were some odd sentences and some typos, which normally I don’t notice in a book. Also, there was a hefty amount of description sometimes, but it’s easy to skim those parts and not lose any valuable information.
About the only thing I didn’t like was the lengthy siege and some defense/offense strategies that didn’t snag hold of my attention. I had a hard time visualizing stuff sometimes, battles and scenery included.
Now, I’d go out right now and buy book two, but I’ve got another read to do for a book club and I don’t have time to tackle another monster of a book. This one was long, and because of my lack of imagery, it took me a while to read it. So I must forgo book 2 for a bit until I catch up on some of my reading. But I won’t be waiting long. I must know more about the Red Knight!
Overall, if you enjoy a more military type fantasy, you’d probably love The Red Knight. If you don’t, but you love a good character, you’d probably do just fine with this book. I did.
How to find Miles Cameron:
Website
Goodreads
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Awesome book. The second one is a very, very different read from the Red Knight; like the first 400+ pages are all building and laying the groundwork for the entire series. It’s a book that’ll only be fully appreciated later in the series. It ends rather dramatically, though, and you do get a glimpse at the large scale story being told, which is going to be AMAZING. It took me about two months to read that one, compared to this which I just sat and devoured.
Yikes! Good to know. I’ll probably tackle this sometime in June/July. I really, really, like the Captain, so I must continue. And now you’ve piqued my interest in the second one even more. I’m trying to resist the urge to buy it right now and forget all the other books I want to read.
It’s pretty awesome. The third book is going to be absolutely insane.