CBR18 Bingo: Bird – Sir Cameron gets turned into a vulture by the evil sorcerer Merulo, in which form he enjoys eating various rodents and pooping on Merulo’s castle walls.
When Sir Cameron narrowly escapes death from the hands of his friends in an effort to fulfill a prophecy to defeat a mad sorcerer, he flees for help to the only other person who is now invested in keeping him alive – the sorcerer Merulo himself.
This is a light-hearted and charming adventure with some romance, some magic, and lots of humor. Cameron is certainly an unusual lead, as a fairly shallow personality who tries to get by in life by saying what he thinks the other person wants to hear. I enjoyed the romance between him and Merulo, though I did (unusually for me!) wish there had been a sex scene or too, since it’s an important part of their deepening relationship. I also enjoyed the unusual world-building – though at first you think it’s a pretty straightforward swords and sorcery world, it becomes clear things are more complicated than that.
I did think the ending goes off the rails a little bit with how it opens up the world, with some sci-fi elements coming into play. I wish we could have gotten a better sense of what Cameron and Merulo’s lives will look like from here on out. While I liked the character of Domitia, I also wished we had learned a bit more about her, and what happens to Glenda after the story ends. Basically, a few extra chapters answering those questions would have given this book another star.
