Apparently, Sir Cameron Needs to Die and it's major question mark

So I picked this book up in Gay’s the Word (who is shocked?) because the cover looked fun. That was it. Well, no. I picked it up physically because of the fun cover, I bought it after reading the blurb and thinking it sounded wild.

Miss blurbarina and the diamonds says that all his life, Sir Cameron has stayed as far away from danger as possible. He is quite frankly too handsome to die a pointless death in battle. But then the Church hands down a prophecy to his fellow knights: the only way to defeat their nemesis, the mad sorcerer Merulo, is to kill Sir Cameron. Short of ideas, Cameron throws himself on the mercy of the one person who now actually wants him to survive: the mad sorcerer. Merulo isn’t thrilled to be babysitting a spoilt, attention-seeking knight, but transmogrifying him into a vulture is at least entertaining. Cameron, meanwhile, is on a voyage of self-discovery. It turns out he’s really, really into surly sorcerers who lock him up and tell him what to do. Who knew? As a legion of knights surround their stronghold, the sorcerer’s poisonous ambitions draw every closer to fruition. Cameron is quite invested in not dying, but he finds he’s also invested in Merulo. And sometimes, supporting the sorcerer you care about means taking an interest in their hobbies. Even if that hobby is trying to kill God. Even if it might get you killed, too.

Before each chapter we got a little paragraph in quite a fun voice that told you what the chapter was about, or at least, the vibe of the chapter was. I wasn’t entirely sure how I felt about them. I appreciated that they added a little more character and whimsy into the book – that part of them I liked – but I definitely felt like a few of them just told you what was going to happen in the chapter, or with telling you the vibe, it kind of locked you into seeing that one single interpretation of what was happening. They were hit and miss for me. Some of them were fun and set up the vibe of what you were about to read, and some of them, like I just said, kind of locked you in to one way of thinking.

The book opens on a prologue where Merulo is turning up to let the Chancellor know he’s going to kill God, which, honestly tea, but the Chancellor just making fun of his robes. We then pop over to the actual chapters and to Cameron, where he’s fighting this thing, makes a boring show of it and then someone comments on how when battles pop up, he always is mysteriously missing. His elf friend, Glenda, tells him he’s going to die – very much Katya, “You’re going to die up there”, core. She ends up trying to kill him, but he manages to escape from her, and then she spends the rest of the book trying to kill him. She reminds me of, and this might be an odd comparison, Ustanak from Resident Evil 6, who spends the entirety of Jake and Sherry’s plot just chasing and trying to kill them. And she’s also like the big guy, Tyrant, from Resident Evil 2, who just kind of turns up periodically to try and kill you.

The fantasy portion of the book was definitely the fantasy that I’ve learned I enjoy. So, I don’t like massive sprawling high fantasy that goes on a massive worldly adventure and barely lets you see locations that you’re in because you’re always on the move. This book spends the majority of its time in Merulo’s castle, then an underwater resort. I think of it akin to Legends & Lattes where it’s in a more concentrated area. But you notice I said fantasy portion. The majority of it was fantasy, but, and no spoilers, it somehow shifted to sci-fi in the final act of the book for some reason. I didn’t realise this book came out so recently, so I’m not going to say how or why, just know it did.

Cameron is clown city central and I really liked him as a character. I loved the character archetype of him being this supposed honourable knight who is just a complete buffoon and coward, basically just not what he should be at all, yet someone the one that ends up taming the sorcerer, since that was, in a sense, what the goal of the knights was, weirdly. I also really appreciated that his clownery maintained throughout the book as well, he always remained exactly who he was. I did think his relationship with Merulo seemed to jump around a bit. I get that we saw the idea that Cameron wanted to seduce him to stop him from being so mean to him all the time and soften up, and the realisation that Cameron was a masochist, but I felt like the whole relationship was missing chunks since all of a sudden, the two loved each other. On another limb, the two of them having this sexual relationship, none of it happens on page. I’m not saying it should have, but, weirdly enough, as someone who’s not the biggest fan of porn without plot, I think this book could have benefitted from showing us this sexual relationship the two have because we were told they were sleeping together and are only shown the weird stuff they do once. Like, it only happens when a character walks in on the two of them and Cameron is being magically shackled upside down while naked.

I don’t know how I feel about this book overall. I feel as though it started really good, and I really liked the idea of the buffoon coming together with the villain who wanted to kill the world’s god. The idea of Cameron needing to die for the Church’s prophecy and then having his friend, Glenda, chasing him down throughout the book like a big scary villain was fun, but then that kind of all went out of the window at the end and Glenda’s storyline got completely wasted and just not finished. A good way I can describe this book is like one of those shows that people love, is building up to something great, and then just has a really bad finale. This book wasn’t bad, and I had fun throughout the majority of it. It was just the last ten percent that left me with a big question mark over my head.

Okay, bye!