Books like The Lost Years of Merlin

I enjoyed the prose, particularly when it describes the natural world. However, the novel is poorly plotted, with the protagonist bouncing from one coincidental encounter to the next. Nearly every problem is solved by something fortuitously dropping from the sky, appearing out of the blue, etc. No fewer than FIVE chapters end with the protagonist falling unconscious. Once is a cliche; five times is an offense against literature. The protagonist is almost willfully stupid. Either that or the author assumes his reader is equally thick. Everything is articulated in the most heavy-handed way possible. Similarly, Rhia and Merlin know each other for a few days, but some passages infer that we're meant to think of them as lifelong friends. They don't behave like people who have known each other for only a few days (particularly when Merlin confirms he's not a ghost to Rhia by wrapping his index finger around hers, as if they've had time to make that a gesture with personal history/significance to either of them). Their relationship is unbelievable. Shim, the tiny giant, speaks like Jar Jar Binks and is equally insufferable. Merlin abandons his loving mother but rescues his evil father. There's just so much to dislike here.