The Red Knight by Miles CameronMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
This is a 5-star review. There were a couple of minor issues with the book, but overall this is exactly what great fantasy fiction looks like.
On one level this is a straight-out swords and sorcery tale. One of the fae has created an incursion into the lands conquered by humanity. His objective is to retake a fortress that is home to a source of magic that is valuable to the fae.
A band of mercenary knights hire themselves out to the abbey that is housed in the fortress. They are led by a bastard son who is young for such a position. He leads this elite group of warriors on the field. He is also in the process of developing the skills needed to use magic.
The nuns of the abbey have rather unusual habits that end up being used to help heal those that are wounded defending the fortress/abbey from the fae siege.
The world suggests that it could be a version of the earth after some sort of cataclysm has wiped out modern technology and replaced it with magic. The religion in the world bears many of the forms of Catholic Christianity; including an opposition/revulsion of the use of magic. It is church teaching about children born out of wedlock that lead the young knight into a mercenary life.
And yet he and his group end up defending a church abbey.
Beneath this straightforward story is an examination of the difficulties of living in a world that uses social/cultural conventions to create a uniform populace. How can a person survive when their very existence is condemned by "the church"? How can a person actively foster a faith that teaches that they are damned?
This is a tremendous start to what I hope will be a fantastic fantasy series.
There are two nits to pick with this book. The grammar editing of the book was quite poor. Fortunately, the story is good enough to pull me right back in after encountering a plethora of easily identified errors.
The second is that the there are times when the book reads like the author just purchased a second-hand copy "Medieval Armor Illustrated". As it turns out, the author's other interest include medieval combat; including armor, natch! It wasn't a huge issue, but there were times when the examination/description of the armor worn by various knights got a little repetitive.
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A brief afterwords:
I was pleasantly surprised to learn that Miles Cameron is a fellow United States Marine. His love of martial experiences definitely comes through in his work. Now I am looking forward to the next installment of this series even more.
After the afterwords:
Per his profile on Goodreads, Miles was actually a Naval officer and suffered under the tutelage of firm Marine Corps hands in OCS. I had misread a common on one of his blogs to mean that he was a Marine. He's still a vet and still writes great fantasy.
