Friday, June 3, 2011

Review: The Last Knight - Hilari Bell

Synopsis: Knight errants don't exist anymore; such an occupation became obsolete a long, long time ago. So what is a rogue - a good-for-nothing, a real dastardly little con artist - like Fisk doing serving the world's last and only knight errant - Sir Michael Seven Oaks - in existence? That's what happens when helpful jerks like him rescue you from the noose.

For all of his complaining, though, Fisk certainly cannot disagree about one thing: with Sir Michael, he sees more than enough adventure. And their latest "gallant" escapade has seen the escape of a nefarious murderess, the Lady Ceceil, from a tall tower that only a damsel in distress should occupy, and of course Fisk and Sir Michael are the ones who must recapture her. Personally, Fisk would rather conveniently forget about the whole mess.


But something's very fishy about the circumstances surrounding Lady Ceceil's supposed poisoning of her husband, and Fisk and Michael soon find themselves acting as detectives to discover the truth. And there's lots of people who don't want them to find anything out.


Review: One word: hilarious. I usually hate characters like Fisk - no honor, "dashing" rogue, womanizer, irritating sarcasm (I love sarcasm, but not the type that's usually employed by adolescent males). Fisk is certainly a womanizer (more on that later), but he's hilarious in every other respect. Few books cause me to laugh out loud; this one did.


Michael, too, was not without his sarcasm. Hilari Bell used a very interesting method of first person narration that works very well when done properly: she switches narrators every other chapter, rotating between Fisk and Michael. She does it very well, giving an opportunity to represent both of their opinions, which livens the story up even more.


Unfortunately, sometimes the humor leans towards the immature college type of humor (this is mostly Fisk's doing), involving certain body parts and such things as those. There isn't so much that it makes it unreadable, but the times that it does appear, it's very annoying.


For the most part, though, The Last Knight was good. I look forward the next one.

Overall Rating: 
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Others in the Rogue & Knight Series:
1)The Last Knight
2)Rogue's Home
3)Player's Ruse

2 comments:

  1. I'm reading these books right now too, and I think they're great. I love these kind of "guy reads" because female characters in books to me always seem to be annoying. But I love nothing more than a "comrade in arms" story. I'm halfway through the second one right now and I'm enjoying it a lot.

    (By the way, you wrote "Matthew" but his name was Michael. Just thought I'd let you know ;)

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  2. Female characters seem to be especially annoying in modern literature, don't they? Glad to see I'm not the only one who thinks along those lines; sometimes it's nice to find a book that really had no female characters - and no romance. :) I hope you enjoy the other books in the series! "Player's Ruse" is super-good.

    *makes silly face* Ah, yes - you are quite right. Thank you for catching that rather important type-o. Where was my head? :) I shall change it directly.

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