You Should Read This: Surrealist Games

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.

What: The story is told by Charlie Gordon and involves intelligence experiments being done on both Gordon and the title character Algernon, who is a white mouse.

Who: Anyone who wants to be decently well read in science fiction should read this book. It’s a classic, and one referenced and discussed elsewhere. One of my favorite stories by Susan Palwick, the title story in The Fate of Mice, is told from Algernon’s POV.

Why: Read it because you will want to know Charlie, to hear him tell his story, and to see a master use the device of an unreliable narrator in a way that takes your heart and breaks it over the book’s knee. Read it to discover a story that has survived the test of time and will, I strongly believe, continue to do so.

When: Read this when you’re thinking about things like how a character gets the reader on their side, as well as how what a character doesn’t say is sometimes as telling as what they do. Read this when you are ready to sit down and read it in one full sitting, preferably, which is doable for faster readers since it’s a slender book.

Where and how: Read it where you won’t mind weeping; public spaces (like airplanes) are unsuitable because you will have to have a heart as hard as winter to not tear up some. This is, in fact, one of the best examples of a fabulous tearjerker of a story that I know.

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