Aside from some of the character and place names, there isn't much here to remind you of the Legend of King Arthur. It's set in a modern-ish world...with airships and dinosaurs. My major issue was that I couldn't connect with the characters - I just didn't care what happened to these people.

I requested a copy of this book before I saw the rating, and as soon as I saw it, I was super skeptical. My skepticism proved to be wrong though, because I still really enjoyed this book. While it was far from the best I've read, the plot kept me intrigued.

This book follows Guinevere on her journey to find Excalibur, highlighting a character usually ignored in the legend. Along the way she meets familiar characters, like Merlin, Arthur, Mordred, and Lancelot. All of these characters have been rewritten to fit into a steampunk world with dinosaurs roaming the wild, so the story felt completely different from other Arthurian legends.

The characters in this were really the star of the book. Guinevere became a historically savvy heroine with a world to protect. Mordred became a gruff bounty hunter with a hidden soft spot. Merlin became a mysterious fortune telling female knight. And, saving the best for last, Arthur became a pirate-esque smuggler, with something to prove. As soon as he waltzed in with his double pistols, I was in love. He was by far my favorite character, I loved his sarcasm and the constant banter between him and Mordred.

Speaking of Mordred, I kind of despised him at times. He was a total jerk, and swung between being kind to Guinevere, and demeaning her. I did my best to ignore his faults, but I do have to say that I was somewhat happy when he fell out of the narrative.

The romance in this book was one of the weakest points. As soon as Arthur laid eyes on Guinevere, he was in love, and because I hate insta-love, I was immediately a bit irritated. Thankfully, Guinevere played hard to get, so our romance turned slightly slow-burn. Arthur and Gawain's flirtations with Guinevere were always a light spot in the book, and kept me smiling.

Now, a lot of the complaints in the other reviews I've seen were about the writing style. Don't get me wrong, it definitely had its problems, but I found myself adapting to it, and by the end of the book, it didn't bother me. We had several large info dumps that I ended up skimming, and the author also had a tendency to write in the "she did this. she did that" formula, which felt super choppy. This may have been because this was a debut novel, but it did make reading a bit hard at times.

Despite the lower ratings on this book, I did enjoy it. I am a fan of most Arthurian retellings though, so that might have been part of it. I loved Wade's reimaginings of the classic characters, and the plot had enough action to keep me interested. I would say that this book is pretty hit-or-miss with readers, and I do understand some of the lower ratings.

Thanks to Miriam Wade and Netgalley for providing a free copy in exchange for an honest review

Thanks to the publisher for providing an eARC of Rise of Knight and Sword in exchange for an honest opinion.

This is a debut book. That is a fact I knew before reading the author bio on the back of the book. I don't agree on being more lenient with debuts so I'll still discuss it as I would anything else but since a lot of my issues with this are thing you normally find in debuts, I'd like to ask you to keep this in mind.

Rise of Knight and Sword either doesn't know what it wants to be, or doesn't know how to communicate it with the reader. The description puts an emphasis on Guinevere pre-adventure but we get very little of that in the actual story. When are we? Where are we? Who are our characters? Everything felt vague even though it was also ultra descriptive. This book has too many adjectives and adverbs, especially when it comes to dialogue tags. You'll rarely find a 'said' without a qualifier following it. I like books that trust you to understand how the character feel based off of context clues but we never get that hear. Mind you, I read an advanced version so phrases like "yawned tiredly" may change, but its such a prevalent problem that I doubt it'll be rectified before publication. The narrative really, really hurts this story here.

So what of the story? It was... it was, I suppose. Some parts were good, some parts were boring or confusing, but perhaps I only found those parts boring or confusing because of my inability to connect to the narrative. This may sound weird because I doubt quite know how to describe it, but I'm not entirely sure if Arthurian lore is Wade's passion. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying she doesn't like it and isn't knowledgeable of it, but loving someone's story so much that you adapt it for a new world and plot requires this level of admiration that normally leaks through the pages. Rise of Knight and Sword felt a lot more like an 'in-name-only' adaptation with characters names and alliances copied over but everything else changed, almost like when you do an AU for a fanfic and put your angsty warlords in a coffee shop. It's still a quest for escaliber so I'm not sure why I felt that way, but its the only way I can make sense of why I had trouble with this plot so I'll leave you there.

Imagine a mixture of this:
- Han Solo + Leia romance
- Dinotopia
- Arthurian Legend
... And you get pretty close to understanding what Rise of Knight and Sword is about. If you watched/read Cursed and thought it needed more steampunk and pterodactyls, then you'll probably love this debut by Miriam Wade.

In this first in the One Sword series (trilogy?), we get political power-grabs, a fancy library, teenage infatuation, Excaliber, and Zeppelin stowaways. There's space for the characters to grow and develop (protag. and antagonists alike), but, at the very least, it adds new elements to a familiar story. I don't recommend reading if you're not a fan of anachronistic reimaginings of Arthurian lore (and definitely not if you're not a fan of Arthurian legends period).

I really wanted to like this book. The variation on the hunt to find Excalibur was a fun idea but the execution made it difficult to become attached to the story. I wanted more character development and left not really knowing the characters beyond their sexual tensions. The book has a few typos and is both overly descriptive and lacking in the details needed to create depth.

Wow.

“Rise of Knight and Sword” is an interesting take on the lore of Camelot as Guinevere finds a map hidden away in a box of artifacts and sets off to find Excalibur with the help of an unlikely duo.

I don’t know where to begin.

Let me start by saying that I appreciate the attempt here at giving the story we all know a sci fi twist however the execution was not as successful as the idea itself.

There’s not a lot of time given to organically build the story, characters or their relationships and a lot of what happens plot wise happens so fast that you almost get whiplash trying to keep up. From the very beginning I was lost trying to understand a world where the descriptions of her home, self and morning routine sound very modern day contrasted quickly with the sudden introduction of pterodactyls before she is handed a map that shatters her world, again no real build up as to why other than the city is big on tourism and not helping its actual citizens, and then we have spaceships?

For me I like to see growth and some exposition before we dive head first into the overall arc which never managed to happen here, there is very little structuring outside of point a and point b and I spent more time side eyeing the narrative especially when it came to the trio as they kept flip flopping on so many things with the biggest being a sexual and physical assault where she gets yelled at by Mordred for showing anger towards Arthur for suggesting she wanted it prior to seeing the bruises and then a handful of chapters later she brings it up again and they both act like this is new information? And Arthur was just the absolute worst which isn’t a new thing for me with the recent reimagining of this tale but my god did this guy need a solid punch to the face for his mood swings and the way he treated Guinevere to the point that in one scene he had to be pulled away because she along with everyone else expected him to become physically violent with her literally three pages after being happy and affectionate which is not okay nor romantic at all and she is the one who has to apologize and take all the blame? Absolutely not.

The relationships themselves are one dimensional and cartoonish at times with insta love an obsession with her beauty and nothing else along conversations that should be happening after a longer period of time than what we get on the page. This isn’t a new dynamic where we have our heroine stumble into a position far outside her comfort zone and try to make the best out of a bad situation and rise to the occasion over the course of the novel as the journey is what keeps us readers coming back to explore and grow with them but with this take there is none of that and I was pretty disappointed.

There’s a lot of moments here that I wish I could show to fully explain my confusion with the story as a whole but I think this book needed a few more drafts to fully flesh out every aspect. I can’t tell you a single defining characteristic for this version of the infamous Camelot characters and while the plot again had some potential with the genre bending it was never going to be successful for me as there was no real way for me to connect with them and the task at hand which was a shame.

I hope I am in the minority as I hate to dislike a book and see it do poorly but overall this was a giant misstep for me.

This book was really good and I read it in a day. I am not sure if it is one I would read again though. The plotline was decent but I could never fully connect with the main characters.

An interesting novel, which grows on the reader very quickly. Guinevere is an archivist who discovers a map leading to the legendary sword, Excalibur. She has to run with it, gets away, and then finds that she has a bounty on her head. What happens next I leave to the reader to find out, as I don't wish to spoil the ending.