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Book Review - Sir Rowan and the Camerian Conquest

by Barbie McNutt

December 22, 2010

Disclaimer: I received this book for free from WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group for this review.

I recently chose Sir Rowan and the Camerian Conquest (The Knights of Arrethtrae) by Chuck Black to review for the Blogging for Books program through WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing. My 14 yo is a medieval nut and I thought this series of books, along with the accompanying Kingdom Series, might be a good fit.

This book is an allegorical tale of pride and the fall from it. I was a little surprised, as I didn't realize the story was allegory until I started the book. This threw me off a little, but the allegory was fairly sound (although too many times, I found myself replacing sword fighting tournaments with football games in my mind). As a female reader, I felt the characterizations were too terse and flat, but the action moved along quickly. Conversations are kept to a minimum and humor is nearly non-existent.

The ideas presented in the book are worthy: pride is destructive and can throw you off the course of your true mission, disobedience brings painful results, our only hope is found in the Lord. The presentation of the ideas left a little to be desired on this mom's part, although I think the target audience (tween and teen boys) might not find fault with the lack of character depth and terse writing.

All in all, I have no problem with my son reading Sir Rowan and the Camerian Conquest, but I won't go out of my way to make sure he has the others in this series. Three stars.