Book Review: The Red Knight by Miles Cameron

 When I was visiting a bookshop last year, I came across The Red Knight, the author is Miles Cameron. Although I have never heard of Miles Cameron, but this book grabbed my attention immediately after I read the synopsis on the back of the dust jacket. In the end, I did not purchase the book that day, because I decided to check out reviews on the net before making a purchase.

After reading some sparkling reviews on Amazon, and Goodreads, I made the decision to give it a try and purchased the book. The book finally arrived on my door step, a waffling 600+ tome with very nice cover arts. It took me 5 days to finish it. And today I will be reviewing this book.


Synopsis:

The story of The Red Knight took place in an alternative universe, in medieval European settings, with magic, politics, wars, religion and such. The story is told in POV style, similar to George Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series. There are only 18 chapters in this book, but each chapter is divided into smaller sections of the story told from the perspectives of different characters. Furthermore, The Red Knight is meant to the be first book to the series called "The Traitor son cycle".

The protagonist is the Red Knight, whose origin and birth is skillfully kept as a mystery by the author, and gradually revealed as the plot progresses. The Red Knight is the captain of a band of travelling sell swords. When they roamed into the country of Alba, they were employed by an abbey to fend off attacks from creatures of The Wild. After The Red Knight and his company accepted the contract, they soon discovered, what originally appeared to be a simple contract turned into a mission to defend the kingdom in an all out war....

What I think about the book:

After I read this book, I am having mixed feelings about it. I really enjoyed the battle scenes in this book, I think the author really knows his stuff about medieval warfare, because the action scenes are superbly done. Another good aspect of this book, is there are some very interesting characters in this book. The story is gritty, violent, and quite straight forward (which is not really a bad thing).

But on the other hand, I really struggled to finish this book. The first two thirds of the book was really slow, and I had to force myself to keep reading it, and this is not a good sign. From page 400 and onward, the pace of the story quickened and things became more interesting. Personally, I think there were too many details in the story, and a significant amount of the book could have been cut to make it more compact.

At the end of the day, I like the story of The Red Knight, but at the same time, I was glad I finished reading it because the story development was so slow that finishing the book itself, feels like an epic achievement.