I promise to read this some day.
I just needed to clear up my shelf in NetGalley.
Thank you so much for allowing me to read and review your titles.
I do appreciate it and continue to review books that I get the chance to read.
Thanks again!

Super slow.

I had to force myself through the first 90% of it. Only kind of got good at the end but then there were just too many plot twists that it made it unbelievable (as unbelievable as fantasy fiction can get, I suppose)

It was like this weird comedic drama? The plot was a bit all over the place and everything d r a g g e d for so long. Maybe I went into this expecting too much.


Thanks to NetGalley for allowing me to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

I think this book was written too young for me or the writing style just didn’t vibe with me. Something made this book hard to get through and I can’t quite put my finger on it. Was really hoping to love this book.

I have always been very fascinated by Merlin's legend. Wether the Arthur's story is real or not, There are some pieces of evidence that it did take place. However, having read many stories involving this legend as made me picky about what I read about it. I did not find this book to be well researched, it did not catch my attention like other novels involving merlin.

This book was quite interesting in premise which is why I managed to get through it but I did have to force myself to go back to reading it a few times. It didn't capture my attention as much as I hoped it would.

This was an interesting read, but I’m still not sure how I really feel about it. I’ve been fascinated by the legend of King Arthur for most of my life and enjoy seeing all of the different interpretations of the stories. To Raise a King, while it is definitely a reworking of the legend of King Arthur, focuses a lot on Merlin: his backstory and his role in Arthur’s life and “death.”
And that’s where it gets really weird. Orton has chosen to depict Merlin as a “Marsonian” — a former inhabitant of Mars. Yep, you heard me right, Merlin’s a martian. Everything else in the story related to the legends of Arthur is very well-researched and lines up with recent historical finds, so the whole martian thing just seemed so out of left field for me. I was glad to get past that section of the book and get lost in the quest.
My other big issue was head-hopping. We jump perspectives a lot (though it does get better toward the end of the book), skipping from one character’s ideas/thoughts/views to another’s with no indication that there is a change until you have to stop for a moment and figure out whose eyes you are looking through. It makes it a bit hard sometimes to stay in the flow of the story.
Yet, Orton’s descriptions of the scenery in Scotland are absolutely lovely. I was mesmerized by the beauty he describes and so want to be walking through those glens and alongside those lochs. And the overall plot following Matt’s quest was definitely enjoyable.
So, while it was not a perfect read for me, there was enough to make me kind of like this book and even want to read the next book in the series. If you like your Arthurian legends with a healthy dash of science fiction, you’d enjoy reading this one, too.
Many thanks to Justin Orton and NetGalley for the digital copy of this book for review purposes. I was not required to give a positive review. All opinions are my very own! 🙂

This book owes me damages for the wasted time I spent reading it.

It just -- cannot decide what the heck it wants to be. Alien story? Portal fantasy? King Arthur legend? Coming of age adventure? Epic scale war drama? Third person limited? Third person omniscient? It tries to be all of these things in fits and starts and fails at really being any of them.

Every character is flat. They are all supposed to be motivated by family relationships (Matt and his longing for a family, Merlin and his love for Arthur and his daughter, Morgause and her lost loved ones, etc.) but none of this can really be felt. Everything is baldly told, about how they care and why, but no attempt is ever made to really <i>convince</i> the reader that any of this is true. The most narrative time dedicated to any relationship is spent on the Matt/Naveena romance, and that is just as void of any real feeling as everything else. They have like two real conversations, Matt sees Naveena's "rose tipped breasts," and then they both just decide that they're in love without ever really speaking again. Reading what I just wrote about them, are <i>you</i> emotionally invested in their relationship? Because my one-sentence summary didn't hook you, the book itself won't either.

This flatness gives the book a kind of shallow, childish quality, but at the same time the story pushes the boundaries of what is typical as far as sexual content in YA fantasy. There's a lot of nakedness, a lot of rape and allusions to rape, and Morgause is sleeping with every man and teenage boy in the British Isles. Throwing rape and people's breasts at you over and over is just weird and uncomfortable when the rest of the book lacks any depth, and when a similar approach is not taken to violence until nearly the very end. Darkness and other circumstances "hide the gore" from our main hero like two or three times, but apparently we all have to constantly look at naked, abused ladies in the harsh daylight?

Strange chaos is the whole vibe of this book. Narratively, we start out in the real world with good old solid Matt, seeing everything from his typical 21st century perspective. This was interspersed periodically with expositional excerpts from Merlin's journal. Halfway through the book the excerpts just... stop? Did we run out of behind-the-scenes details to explain? At nearly this point, the perspective also does a huge zoom-out and we are treated to a kaleidoscope of perspectives from people as random as Aldivon, Lancelot, Brick, Aldivion's disloyal soldier, Guinevere, Lancelot's captain, an "unnamed rider", and an innkeeper and his wife.

Most of these were unnecessary. We could have found out what happened to the innkeeper and his wife when Matt meets them again later. We could have discovered the mission of the "unnamed rider" when Brick and Naveena run into Matt on the road. Why do we follow Guinevere up to a Christian monastery and then ignore her for the rest of the book and literally never see her again? There is just so much filler, so many things we didn't need to see directly or have explained in such useless detail. Lancelot literally did not even need to be in the book. He could have been cut out completely, and everything could have still happened the same.

The pacing is wack too. The beginning is glacially slow: we have to watch Matt be dragged in and out of the portals five times and say "no <i>WAY</i>!" to himself constantly for days and days, before the real plot even starts. Then Merlin somehow teaches him fluent Gaelic, swordplay, and the riding skills and physical endurance of a hardened 6th century traveler in <i>six weeks</i>? Aside from the blatantly unrealistic nature of that achievement, this is an <i>entire coming of age sequence</i>; it happens in like ONE CHAPTER, and we only really see the first day -- the rest is a handwavey "the rest of the six weeks passed in a blur" summary. Afterward, Matt is thrown headlong into the 6th century and, apparently, knows everything about the geography and culture, finds nothing strange at all about it, and is often referred to as "having left childhood behind" or "become a man."

You can't 👏 just 👏 say that 👏 my dude. 👏

<i>That's not how books work.</i> I'm not going to believe Matt is anything but the hapless, whiny, 21st century orphan he was last chapter, because I <i>didn't see him change</i>.

The language also undergoes confusing shifts. Matt starts out swearing a lot and talking like a normal teenager. When he's in the 6th century, he adopts a lot of very formal parlance very quickly. His exclamations vacillate from "gosh gee" type phrases to the F-word and B-word. Are we to assume that Merlin taught him to say "bitch" in Gaelic? Some of the 6th century peasants' dialogue is written in a sort of brogue, like you would write a Scottish accent in English, but they're speaking Gaelic like Matt and Aldivon, right? Are we to assume that they have a <i>different</i> accent in Gaelic than everyone else?

There's a lot of attempted intrigue. Is Aldivon good or evil? Is Merlin really Merlin? Is Brick a traitor or Naveena? The story succeeds in making you doubt everything you think you know, mostly because everyone is just acting completely inconsistently. Naveena provokes Matt in the beginning by arguing that Morgause isn't evil, even though she of all people KNOWS very well Morgause's true character; she is even now under Morgause's threat of death! There is no reason for her to say something so out of character, except that the narrative really wanted to convince us that she's <i>not</i> in fact Naveena, and not in fact the spy. Morgause's chapters try to convince us the spy is Brick, and then once it turns out that he's innocent, he's immediately killed. He existed for only one purpose in the first place: to be suspicious and distract the reader from Naveena. What a waste of the only person with any character development over time.

All in all, it just seems like <i>To Raise a King</i> needs some more editing. It needs to find some consistency in pace, consistency in theme, and consistency in style. And it needs to cut out the ton of extra fluff and spend that time on bringing the characters and their relationships to life instead.

One of the best King Arthur legend books I've ever read....

..and I've read a lot of them! Awesome book.... My only hope is that there's more in future books about Arthur and Lancelot.... Since we all know they're the true heroes!

I am a fan of Arthurian legends and retellings, although I did fee that this book wasn't for me, not because of the time travelling but some of the writing was hard to take in.. I also found that some of the characters lacked the depth they needed but the descriptions of the world and battles brilliant.

Arthurian legends but with aliens? Tell me more!
I liked this book, but I feel it could have been better with more careful editing and more drawn out characterization. During some parts is quite boring, but it makes up for it with great action and compelling, but a bit underdeveloped, characters. The MC is interesting, while being a little flat, and the secondary characters are colourful.

To Raise a King is an enjoyable take on the Arthurian legend. The story is constructed with descriptive and beautiful prose, likeable characters, and magical balance between history, myth, and entirely new fiction. These elements blend together to send the reader on a unique adventure into a past one wants to believe happened.

Orton's command for the Arthurian legend and sixth century Scotland landscape provides an incredible backdrop to his story. The brutality of the time, the beauty of the wild Scottish countryside juxtaposed the unreal and science-fiction aspects of the story in a manner that makes the story seem less foreign.

The American slang stood out like a missed note in a solo, a grating on the reader throughout the story. This inconsistency mixed with some odd but noticeable anachronisms made the story less than ideal.

I feel mixed about this story. I am not sure if I would say I enjoyed it, but it was not a bad story. This book felt like sipping black coffee when you were expecting Earl Grey tea. It just was not what I wanted or expected. I think there are plenty of readers who would love this story, but it wasn't right for me.

I want to thank Justin Orton and NetGalley for a copy of this in exchange for an honest review.