 Okay, so I want to be upfront about this This is not going to be a review in the traditional sense where I finish something and then judge it as a whole afterwards Because I didn't actually finish reading the red knight right here. I got around 60% of the way through and I realized that I was just Really bored with it and I couldn't go on and I'll get some more into the reasons why in a minute But just keep in mind that everything I say here is really only judging the first two thirds of the book This is the introduction song. It's not very good, but it's not too long So talk about wasted potential when the red knight started off. I thought it was really good I thought I had a neat setup It was maybe not the most unique setting or the most unique character cast But it was clearly it had some passion behind it and it looks like it was going somewhere but then as time went on I realized that Very little was actually happening It was kind of just okay. There's a siege at this abbey and There's some other guys that are around doing stuff And that was that was kind of it So the plot to this is pretty simple or at least the setup to it is There's a band of mercenaries which are led by a guy who doesn't want to give out his real name He just calls himself the red knight and in the narration He's also sometimes referred to as the captain and then they're hired by this nun to protect her abbey And the town around it from these creatures that are coming out of this place called the wild and the wild is Well, basically just an area where human civilization has not taken root yet It's just overgrown forests and shit, and there's really powerful magic there. There are tons of creatures out there like things called boglins which are basically goblins, and there's also like trolls There's humans that live out there, but they're Mostly tribal folks that occasionally come out and raid and so yeah, it makes sense. Okay. We need protection from them but After a little while there they realize oh shit there's a giant-ass army in the wild that's coming to take us and Then they're under a siege they get under a siege pretty early on in the book actually and even by the point I was at the siege was still ongoing and meanwhile, there's a whole bunch of other characters which keeps cutting to and Well, I hate to repeat myself, but they are kind of just doing stuff You know some of them are also involved again in the fight against the wild in some way But most of them are not directly connected to the conflict at the Abbey, which is called listen Karak Okay, so before I get into anything else. I kind of want to talk about the setting here now this setting is Kind of interesting I like what they could do with it But this book doesn't really do all that much with it at least not the parts that I read Because what it is is it's our world except magic exists and so a lot of the countries are different and Apparently Jesus was still a thing so Christianity is still a thing and So that's why you know you have nuns and priests and Abbeys and all that But at the same time it's a little bit different and so that's that's kind of interesting like it's still Alien enough that I don't feel like it's a cop-out like something like Blood Wars Rebellion was But it's also familiar enough that I can look at it and say oh, that's kind of interesting how our world might have turned out differently and It's also pretty easy to tell what countries they're talking about like the majority of this takes place on Alba Which is pretty clearly a bastardization of Albion which is Great Britain and then there's also other countries like Gaul Which is France and Morea, which is Spain and the Empire? That's just the Holy Roman Empire like it's not hard to figure out what's going on And so I think that's kind of interesting and I also like the idea of the wild You know it's this place up north which has all this powerful magic and everything and the humans built a wall to try And keep it out, but it's not quite working that well and now there's a force from beyond the wall that's coming to take them and I Know that saying that is gonna make a lot of people think of Game of Thrones But I think it's different enough that it it works pretty well It's not a rip-off and the main reason for that is that in Game of Thrones You know you do have the white walkers a.k.a. the others that are gonna come south and kill everybody but before that you also have the wildings that are Trying to escape and so they're the main threat at first. They're the ones that are attacking and The humans of the Night's Watch have to fight them off Whereas in this in the red night The creatures and the magical threat from beyond the wall is coming Yes, but there are also humans that are working with it rather than fleeing from it And I already mentioned the outwallers who are the tribal people that you know come out and raid and everything and they're just I Guess you call them uncivilized, but you know and in that sense they're pretty similar to the wildlings yes, but then there's also these guys called the Jax and They're actually pretty interesting, but they barely got any focus, so they didn't really add much But the Jax are basically just rebels against the current order You know they don't like that there are kings and lords that well rule over everything And so they're trying to fight against that they seem kind of like medieval anarchists And I thought oh that that's pretty cool And they they also hide out beyond the wall and then come out and like attack Soldiers and stuff and then run back into the wild and so they're allying with these guys But again, they don't really spend time on that so I couldn't really get into it, but the setting aside Really the biggest issue with this book for me was that it started off feeling like it was going to be a heroic fantasy you know a relatively small-scale like low magic or moderate magic setting Where the stakes of the story are more about this one town or this one region rather than the whole world or the whole kingdom and As you see the army is really huge and you realize what the villain is planning on doing You realize okay It's epic fantasy where you know the stakes are much higher and I don't have a problem with it trying to transition into that But it feels like the story wants to feel as though it's epic fantasy without actually being epic fantasy What I mean by that is Well, like I said before there's a huge character cast and most of them feel like they don't need to be there You know There's all these different guys from all over Alba and for the most part their characters just boil down to yeah This guy's a knight and he's super badass and he likes to fight and this other guy is also a knight and he's also super badass and he also likes to fight and This guy is a merchant and he's just kind of traveling at the moment, but you know he's It's just it just goes on and on and on and I couldn't see the point to any of it Like if there's an epic fantasy which takes place over in it an entire giant empire or an entire continent It makes sense to have characters from all those different areas and they're viewing things from different perspectives And they all have their own missions and their own goals and that's fine I get it but in this case the characters didn't really feel like they had their own missions or their own goals and They also all kind of blended together. And so it feels like this was Originally a heroic fantasy which is trying to make itself seem like an epic fantasy by just having all that stuff there and Also, like okay. It's a really long book as well. This copy is Let me check it's 600 and It's about 650 pages. So yeah, that's a really long long book And it feels like it's long just because well epic fantasy is supposed to be long so we we got to add stuff and So yeah, I think this could have worked well as a smaller scale heroic fantasy story Where it really just focused on the red night But trying to make it much bigger and more epic is doing it a huge disservice And so that that dissonance between those two ideas I mean it really killed it for me because there was all that stuff With characters that I just don't care about and a lot of battles and stuff that I couldn't quite get into and It just made me realize that I was bored like I didn't want to keep reading Speaking of battles. Those are actually pretty good for the most part now I just complained about them a little but that's mostly because Like I couldn't get into them because a lot of the characters weren't that good But when I could get into them, they were really fucking good. Okay, like they're very well-written. They're pretty Realistic, I guess like okay, maybe not totally realistic But their low magic is the thing so it's mostly just like okay dudes and armor beating the shit out of you each other and I I like that honestly it gives everything a more gritty feeling and again it The action is really flowing. There we go. I couldn't think of the word it flows really well and You do get a sense of the desperation of what's going on and the exhaustion that a lot of the characters are feeling and You understand that like okay if they don't do this right a lot of people are gonna die And so when I could get into the action scenes they were great. I just wish that They well, I just wish that they were in a better book Yeah, I don't mean to sound too snarky with that because like at the end of the day this book isn't terrible It's really not even bad. I just couldn't finish it because I was bored something else that kind of bothered me was the magic and This is also kind of the same idea as the heroic versus epic fantasy thing where the magic Seems to be going for kind of a soft magic system feel where like you don't know all that much about how it works And so when you see it, it's it's supposed to feel more mysterious and dangerous and at first I was okay with that but then When the characters are talking about it and when they're mentioning how it works It feels like they understand a lot about it. It feels like to them It's a pretty hard system and they you know has clearly defined rules But the issue is that the audience has never made privy to how those rules work or rather were given very little information, so I was never quite sure how it worked and I Mean again, maybe they explain this later like maybe they explain it in the latter part of the book or in the later books in the series because this is part of a series, but I Mean I couldn't I couldn't get into it at the time and it was treating me like I should know what's going on But at the same time it's treating me like it wants me to be kind of in awe of this mysterious magical force and I Mean you really can't do it but you really can't do both of those you got to pick one I know I haven't talked too much about the characters in this so far and that's because I Mean most of them just aren't that interesting like I said It kind of just boils down to this guy's a knight and he's bad-ass and likes to fight and this other guy's also bad-ass and likes to fight and I mean they all have a little bit of personality I'll give them that much like none of them are total blank slates But they just blend together too much and like the red knight himself We get an inkling of what his past is like But this book is really banking on him being a mysterious figure While also being this huge bad-ass and like to the point where it doesn't even give us his real name until like halfway through The book it's Gabriel by the way that might seem like a spoiler, but it's really not it doesn't mean anything The facts that they don't tell us his name feels more like a gimmick than anything Like it doesn't add anything to it, but anyways, it's just it feels I Don't know edgy. I guess like it feels like the red knight is almost a self-insert character because again He's this huge mega bad-ass who almost always wins. He's a genius and he's a Veteran of many many battles and he's only 20 years old Which is a little weird like that is stretching my disbelief a bit if he would if he had been like 25 26 then I would have found that easier to believe but at whatever whatever the point is He just feels a little too Mary Sue ish and he's not interesting enough to really make up for that and I think the only character that I I Wouldn't say I was getting into him But I thought he was interesting was this French knight who was convinced that an angel was protecting him And he was convinced that he was the greatest knight in the world and he was a huge huge asshole asshole, but Well, he was interesting at least, you know, he didn't bore me to tears every time he was on the page So that's really the only thing I have to say about this character cast Actually, that's a lie. The villain is kind of interesting, you know, his name is Thorne. He's just this magical sorcerer who managed to Get all the forces of the wild behind him and now he's going out and conquering stuff and I mean, he's not an amazing character, but He had some personality to him and he felt like a genuine threat. So I'll give I'll give him that much So that's about all I have to say that this book was It had a lot of potential But it felt like it was wasting most of it and I mean considering how long my to-read list is I Don't want to waste too much more time trying to get through another 200 pages or so of this. So I don't really I don't recommend this really unless you're Super super into like a heroic fantasy epic fantasy hybrid, which doesn't quite mesh I don't think but maybe you'll feel differently Other than that, I can't really recommend it to too many people Uh Well, no, that's it super huge. 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