Camelot Burning by Kathryn Rose: Lots of metal monsters, not a lot of character development

Camelot Burning 

by 

Kathryn Rose

So Camelot has banned magic in favor of the ‘Mechanical Arts’ which means that Excalibur is a giant sword with a gauntlet that attached to a person’s arm and Merlin is actually an inventor.  Well, he’s also a recovering magic addict which is equally crazy. Unknown to the rest of the court Merlin has taken on an apprentice, Vivienne, Guinevere’s lady-in-waiting. Other than Vivenne’s looming future (which promises a good bit more embroidery than alchemy or metallic creatures) things are going well for Camelot. Arthur has recently married Guinevere and his knights are off in search of the Holy Grail. Then Morgan Le Fey shows up to blow things up because of course she does.

Characters

Vivienne: I have a problem with this child’s face. Mostly because I can’t quite figure out why she rubbed me the wrong way. She just never clicked with me. I never felt like I understood her very well and her reactions (or occasionally lack thereof) fell a bit flat because of that. Every scene was a guessing game of ‘why did that surprise her?’ or ‘why would she act like that’ I don’t know maybe I just missed something.

Merlin: Was actually really cool even if he was a jerk sometimes. Not to mention is whole ‘past addiction’ shtick reminded me so much of Sherlock Holmes. I guess he was just one of those characters that was so unexpectedly unique that you liked them by default.

Marcus: Why is there so many ‘M’ names in this book! There’s Merlin, Morgan, Marcus and Mordred! My poor brain couldn’t keep track of them all.

Arthur, Lancelot and Guinevere kinda sorta not really: there is a surprisingly little amount of the actual ‘main characters’ in this book. 

Arthur spends a good bit of time off in the woods doing who knows what (not defeating Morgan that’s what) and Guinevere and Lancelot making adulterous googly eyes at each other I mostly disliked all three of them.

Likes

The concept is super cool: I mean steampunk Camelot! Excalibur is a giant sword with a mechanical gauntlet that can tell if it’s Arthur who’s holding it (who knows how though). And if it isn’t Arthur well say bye, bye to your fingers. I’m not entirely sure how you can have steampunk in a medieval setting though. I guess it sort of worked but it was still a bit weird.

It promised evil magic and it delivered evil magic: do you ever start a book and everybody is all ‘magic is actually really bad for you and evil don’t touch it’ and you just know that a few chapters later the protagonist will find out that magic is perfectly fine as long as you use it right/don’t abuse it/etc. Well for once the magic stayed bad for you. Magic was portrayed more like an addictive substance that humans weren’t technically supposed to possess.

Dislikes

Arthur and Morgan Le Fey (his half-sister) had a kid together: First of all, 

 Second of all EWW!! Arthur, honey, I’m aware that you aren’t known for your decision-making skills but that’s far even for you. Anyway, that was all kinds of nasty. I don’t even care if it was in the old legends because that was definitely an image I didn’t need.

Insta-love why? Every time. Every time. If I ever stop reading YA books altogether it will be purely because of Insta-love. Look I’m sure authors are perfectly capable of having a character’s first interaction with their love interest not revolve around how hot they are respectively. Believe it or not but it gets really annoying after a while.  

Tiny complaint about the writing: the description was really oddly distributed. There were several main areas where the characters interacted but I never knew how they all fit together which left me feeling very lost and confused. Not to mention an insane amount of time was spent on dresses and people’s faces instead of the much more interesting mechanical dragons and stuff.

Concluding this review is kind of difficult guys. I absolutely love the world and the concept behind it but  the confusing writing and subpar characters just kind of ruined it for me. I was bored a lot and the climax left me feeling vaguely cheated and annoyed. In the end Camelot Burning just wasn’t entertaining.