Five Ways
Subscribe to my newsletter and get a free story!
Share this:

Review: The Red Knight By Miles Cameron

In the past I’ve found the promotional bag of books from a con can vary widely in terms of quality. One treasure that emerged from my World Fantasy Convention bag, though, is THE RED KNIGHT by Miles Cameron. I’m about to send my copy off to a friend, and I thought I’d recommend it to other folks as well.

In flavor, it reminds me a little of what I like about Joe Abercrombie – a nice grittiness to the characters, as well as a melange of viewpoints that end up weaving together coherently to deliver a story that pulls you along. The social structure feels medieval, full of knights and squires, but while noble by birth, most are not noble in nature. I like strong female characters in my fiction, and there’s plenty of them in here, including some older ones, which I appreciate. The fighting is nicely choreographed and realistic, without the description ever getting tedious.

It’s the usual some dark mystic force is invading sort of plotline, but it’s enjoyable and tense. I’m a fan of big fat fantasy novels, and this is both engaging and highly satisfactory, to the point where I’m eager to read the next, since THE RED KNIGHT is the first of a trilogy. The jacket says Miles Cameron writes historical fiction under another name, and I’m going to poke around and see if I can’t find his other work, since I enjoyed this so much.

One Response

  1. This is quite a recommendation. I haven’t read a big fat fantasy in ages (though I’ve read and loved so many of them), since it’s hard to wade through and find the good stuff, but maybe I’ll check this one out.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Get Fiction in Your Mailbox Each Month

Want access to a lively community of writers and readers, free writing classes, co-working sessions, special speakers, weekly writing games, random pictures and MORE for as little as $2? Check out Cat’s Patreon campaign.

Want to get some new fiction? Support my Patreon campaign.
Want to get some new fiction? Support my Patreon campaign.

 

"(On the writing F&SF workshop) Wanted to crow and say thanks: the first story I wrote after taking your class was my very first sale. Coincidence? nah….thanks so much."

~K. Richardson

You may also like...

You Should Read This: A Theory of Fun for Game Design by Raph Koster

Cover for A Theory of Fun for Game Design by Raph Koster
One of the many nice things about the book is the illustrations, which are both informative and quirkily entertaining. Highly recommended for anyone who likes games on either the design or playing side of things.
There are some books I loan reluctantly or not at all; this is one of them. This is because it used to be hard to get (nowadays you can find it in both electronic and hardcopy form), and it’s such a charming, useful little book for thinking about game (and narrative) design.

A Theory of Fun for Game Design is written by an author who deeply loves games, understands how they work, and believes in them as an art form. As the forward by Will Wright notes, Koster brings a multi-disciplinary method to the examination of games, pulling out basic concepts and breaking them down in a way that is both easy to understand and enjoyable to read. Accompanying his pithy observations are cartoons illustrating each concept, such as the illustration accompanying “Stories are powerful teaching tools in their own right, but games are not stories,” in which one student says to another, “I beat the last level of Ulysses last night. I had to use god mode for the end boss. Molly is really tough!”

A listing of the chapters provides a good sense of the book:

  1. Why Write This Book?
  2. How the Brain Works
  3. What Games Are
  4. What Games Teach Us
  5. What Games Aren’t
  6. Different Fun for Different Folks
  7. The Problem with Learning
  8. The Problem with People
  9. Games in Context
  10. The Ethics of Entertainment
  11. Where Games Should Go
  12. Taking Their Rightful Place

With Gamergate still brewing merrily on Twitter, those last few items seem particularly important. “The Ethics of Entertainment” contains all sorts of useful stuff, including a passage about end user experience typical in Koster’s wry, succinct summations:

The dressing is tremendously important. It’s very likely that chess would not have its long-term appeal if the pieces all represented different kinds of snot.

He goes on to say something that resonates with recent discussions:

The ethical questions surrounding games as murder simulators, games as misogyny, games as undermining traditional values, and so on are not aimed at games themselves. They are aimed at the dressing.

Koster extends that even further, saying directly “Creators in all media have a social obligation to be responsible with their creations.”

Despite Koster’s correct insistence that games are not stories, for writers, Koster’s book is well worth reading. A lot of the material overlaps with the ways people enjoy stories, particularly the section about the brain.

The book may also change the way you perceive games when playing them, mainly because Koster talks about them in terms of an art form, like a story or a painting, rather than the trivial pursuit label that sometimes get slapped on such entertainments. Koster believes deeply in the evolution of games to something as immersive and enlightening as any other media.

#sfwapro

...

You Should Read This: A New Blog Feature

Abstract image for the website of Cat Rambo, speculative writer and editor.
The "You Should Read This" feature will focus on the books I love and find myself pressing on people. Commentary and suggestions are welcome.
One of my goals in 2014 is to be better about blogging. Towards that end, I’m implementing a daily post, “You Should Read This,” in which I’ll briefly describe a book that I recommend. The plan is to range around a bit, and include notable new fiction, some forgotten classics, some writing books, and some books that I just plain love.

In doing this, I’ve followed the classic quintet of questions: what, who, where, when and why (and sometimes how). I’ll try to keep those brief, to the point, and yet still entertaining.

But why, I hear you saying, should we believe you’ll follow through on this?

Because I have already written a number of these, and they’re lined up in the queue and ready to go. Take THAT, forces of disorganization.

If you’re a writer that has a book coming out and would like a guest spot in which you can share a recommendation for a book (other than your own) you think people should read, drop me a line.

...

Skip to content