"Twenty-eight florins a month is nowhere near enough when a wyvern's jaws snap shut on your helmet."
I'm paraphrasing from memory here, but that line hit me somewhere around hour three, and I actually paused my dishwashing to just... stand there. Dripping sponge in hand. Because that's the thing about Miles Cameron—he understands that horror isn't about gore. It's about dread. It's about the wet crunch of something that shouldn't exist closing around your skull while you're just trying to do your job.
Look, I came to this book sideways. The Red Knight isn't horror in the traditional sense, but growing up in a house where Dungeons & Dragons was considered satanic, there's something deeply satisfying about spending 31 hours with mercenaries fighting creatures called "the Wild." My younger self would have been grounded for a month. My current self listened to the whole thing during closing shifts at the library, shelving returns in the dark stacks because apparently I still haven't learned my lesson about atmosphere.
When Fantasy Remembers It Can Be Terrifying
Here's what Cameron gets right that so many fantasy authors miss: the Wild isn't just a threat. It's unknowable. It's intelligent. And it hates you in ways you can't comprehend. The wyverns and boglings and irks—they're not just monster-of-the-week fodder. They're organized. They scheme. And when they attack the abbey (a nunnery full of women who are way more interesting than "pretty nuns" would suggest), it's not a siege. It's a slow, creeping horror show.
I've talked on the podcast about how the best horror makes you feel small. The Red Knight does this while also making you care about a genuinely morally grey protagonist who's kind of a cocky jerk. He's young, he's arrogant, he's got secrets that unfold over hours and hours of listening. And he's in way over his head.
The pacing is... okay, I'm gonna be honest. It drags in places. There are a LOT of POV characters. Like, a lot. Knights and nuns and Wild creatures and peasants and courtiers. Around hour fifteen, I had a moment of "wait, who is this again?" But Cameron's doing something ambitious here—he's building a world where the horror comes from understanding that this conflict is bigger than any one person. Even the Red Knight himself.
Matthew Wolf Commits (And That's Everything)
The narrator commits. That's rare.
Matthew Wolf has to juggle dozens of characters across 31 hours, and honestly? He nails it. The Red Knight sounds young and sharp. The older knights sound weary. The creatures of the Wild sound... wrong. In the best way. There's this quality to his voice when he's doing the inhuman characters that made Shirley (my cat, not Jackson) perk up her ears more than once.
I've heard some folks complain about his accent work being inconsistent, and yeah, okay, maybe. But here's the thing—when you're deep in a battle scene at 11 PM and the audio is describing something with too many legs breaching a wall, you're not thinking about whether that knight sounds more Scottish or more vaguely medieval. You're thinking about how you maybe should have turned a light on.
Wolf understands pacing in a way that elevates Cameron's already solid prose. The quiet moments breathe. The battle scenes hit like a mace to the chest. I genuinely forgot I was doing chores multiple times, which is either a credit to his skill or evidence that I should not be trusted with a mop.
The 31-Hour Question
Thirty-one hours is a commitment. I won't pretend otherwise. This isn't a quick weekend listen. This is a relationship. And like any relationship, there are moments where you're deeply invested and moments where you're zoning out while someone explains medieval economics.
But if you're the kind of person who wants fantasy that takes its horror elements seriously? If you want mercenaries who feel like actual people making terrible decisions for money? If you want a magic system that's genuinely creepy and a world that feels lived-in and dangerous? This is it.
Skip this if: you need tight pacing and a small cast, or if 31 hours of medieval military fantasy sounds like homework. Listen if: you want fantasy that remembers it can be a horror delivery system when done right.
My podcast listeners are going to love this. I'm already planning an episode on fantasy-horror crossovers, and The Red Knight is going to be exhibit A. It's not perfect—the slow sections are real, and the character bloat can be disorienting—but when it works? When the Wild comes howling out of the forest and Wolf's voice drops into something primal? Before They Are Hanged hits that same balance of morally grey mercenaries making terrible choices in a world that wants them dead, if you need more after this.
Shelving This One in the Dark Stacks
I listened in the dark. Mistake? Maybe. Worth it? Absolutely.
(Shirley was unimpressed. I was terrified. Standard operating procedure around here.)
