WRITER.

Rating: 10 out of 10 stars

384 pages

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Humor

Spoiler-Free section

This is not exactly the sort of book I usually read. I described it to my mom as wildly inappropriate but hilariously funny.

Sir Cameron, the titular character, is found to be part of a prophecy.

No, he’s not the chosen one. Not quite.

Instead, it is discovered that in order to defeat the evil sorcerer who wants to kill God and end magic, Sir Cameron must be stabbed through the neck and killed at a certain location.

“A prophecy is like a recipe. In order to get the end result, you must follow each step.”

Now, the good guys want him dead. The neutral guys want him dead. Heck, basically everyone wants him dead.

Since he fails to be properly honored by his undesired role in ending the war against the sorcerer Merulo, he instead throws himself upon the mercy of said sorcerer, the only person who is invested in his survival.

Sir Cameron is a cowardly man with a huge ego. His method of getting out of difficult situations is by flirting, regardless of the gender or age of the person in question. Above all things, he hates being bored. And his life becomes anything but ordinary after he meets Merulo.

Merulo is an old man with deep secrets. In this world, each person who is born with magic has a limited amount, and when it is used up, it’s gone forever. But he has a seemingly endless reservoir of magic. He uses his magic to create constructs, beings made of wood that he can control and order around. These are his soldiers in his war against the Church and God.

As a sex-repulsed asexual, I expected the kinkiness of Sir Cameron, who is turned on when he is being punished or threatened, to bother me more. The actual descriptions of this were not too graphic, luckily, and even though that is not usually my sense of humor, I was not scared off by it. It kind of reminded me of I’m in Love With the Villainess by Inori in that way.

The chapter titles are one of my favorite things in the book. The first one is as follows:

“In Which the Mad Sorcerer Merulo Announces His Nefarious Intention to the World, Expecting Some Nonspecific Mixture of Fear and Awe but Is Instead Ridiculed for His Clothing, Which he Chose of the Basis of Wanting to Look Intimidating and is Thus Rather Sensitive About.”

Read more below if you don’t mind spoilers!

Spoiler time!

I didn’t expect this hard fantasy world to turn out to be sci-fi as well. It is weird to have magic and high tech in one story, but I found that it worked, kind of like it did in She-Ra and the Princesses of Power.

Learning that this world is actually Earth was quite the twist. The world was destroyed by pollution and people left on spaceships, abandoning the world. It was then saved by a being they called God, who re-shaped the world based on a franchise called Legend of Larnia, whose merchandise the supposed God discovered in a capsule in space and used as inspiration. The day that God saves the world is called Descentmass by the Church.

A barrier shows up between the world and space. The AI overlords who ruled Earth became dragons. The celebrities and influencers became elves. Chickens were always chickens.

I actually loved that twist and found it to be creative. I never would have guessed any of it.

Merulo wants to end the world’s magic and bring back science, but it is certainly an uphill battle, especially since he now has to deal with the pesky Sir Cameron. Turning him into a vulture at first seems like a good idea since the prophecy isn’t fulfilled if a vulture is killed. I think it is even funnier when he turned into a woman and was horrified and thought he was dying when he had his first period – it couldn’t possibly happen every month, could it?

I’m honestly not sure how I feel about the significant age gap between Merulo and Sir Cameron. Their ages are not given, but Merulo was an adult 40 years ago when the prologue began, so they are at least a few decades apart in age. They have such a strange romance, but it was written with humor and I appreciated that.

When Merulo turns Cameron back into a his usual handsome self and sends him packing, they are both hurt. Cameron tries to come back, but his former friend Glenda captures him to kill him. When he actually dies, Merulo uses all his magic to turn back time and save his life. So the prophecy does come true. He for the most part uses his power up to save his lover, rendering him near-helpless. I love the trope when people try so hard to avoid a prophecy but they actually play right into it as a result.

Another crazy twist – Merulo is actually a dragon, so from then on he cuts off body parts to use for the cost of magic. Dragons are almost all extinct in this world. The Church even burnt the heart of Merulo’s mother to learn the prophecy.

Sir Cameron and Merulo’s sister Hydna try to help him in his quest, but Cameron does his best to convince Merulo that he shouldn’t literally give an arm and a leg to make his dream a reality. Only even giving that, he can’t destroy God, because the God sacrificed himself to let the world be reborn. But he does successfully connect Larnia with the outside universe.

I was so glad when Merulo didn’t turn back into an AI. It is obvious that Sir Cameron loves him, and he even says so. I think that was Sir Cameron’s greatest fear. I really wanted Merulo to choose his lover over his quest, but he kind of got both so I guess I was satisfied.

I would recommend this book to anyone who wants a good laugh and doesn’t mind a little irreverent humor. There are a lot of people who hate or dislike this book but for me it was a win.