Posted by I picked this one up because I’m always looking for a comedy, I saw Kitty’s positive review for it {Kitty’s 8/10 Review – starts 5:56}, so onto the TBR it went. I actually read this quite some time ago and just hadn’t written a review for it.
This book is a clever parody of the classic “going on a Quest” storyline. It’s kind of like an MMORPG or a dungeons and dragons game without all the pesky stats. I like LitRPG and things in that general arena, but I’m not a huge fan of endless paragraphs of stats. This plays off the classic grouping structure of a dungeon raid. There’s a place simply called “The Town” where adventurers meet up to go on a Quest through one of the many Gates located near a mountain. The Gates open up into a multitude of different worlds where brave adventurers can score huge amounts of treasure and wealth if they can make it back alive. Each group has the stereotypical specialized members like a Ranger, Healer, Wizard, Rogue, Warrior, etc. Each of these kinds of characters has a POV as we are introduced to them one by one at the beginning of the book. They start out separately, scattered across the world, and we watch as they all trek towards The Town for various reasons, all wanting to end up going on a Quest. Even though you don’t know how exactly they are going to end up in a group together, it’s very obvious that they will eventually team-up.
My favorite character hands down was Andreton, the Warrior. He’s a giant of a human requiring a specialized cow-mount instead of a horse because he’s so large. He names the “cow” Francis and adores her (she’s like a bison on steroids, enormous). He’s a killing machine, but also sweet to kids and animals. He’s not that bright, but he’s genuine and loyal. If I had to pick a second favorite it’d be the cranky, old healer who’s tired of men coming to him with pox-ridden genitalia expecting him to be able to help. He’s 86 and has seen far too many dicks than is reasonable, even for a healer. I wouldn’t say these are incredibly in-depth characters that blew me away, but they didn’t lack dimension and weren’t flat like happens so many times in comedies. They felt like exaggerated real people, enough to make things funny, but not cartoon-like to the point where you forget them after you’re done reading – I’ll remember Andreton for a long time.
The Gods are real and the Lesser Gods like Loki, Jehovah, and Ganesh love to fuck with humans when they aren’t busy fucking with each other. Most people make it a habit to pray to a handful of them just in case they decide to come down and help out. The gods can get super specific as well, like the “God of Interesting Conversation” which reminded me a bit of Pratchett. There are lots of creatures and magical things you’d be familiar with, like Sorcerors, Necromancers, Warlocks, Witches etc, and a few things that are a bit off-beat like Spyra the dimension-hopping Blink Dog. There was a good amount of world-building as far as gods, monsters, types of warriors, guilds and other things of that sort. Much of it was silly, but it was entertaining none the less.
The humor mostly landed for me, there were a few more risky jokes that didn’t settle right with me – but overall it didn’t sour my experience and I found myself smiling if not laughing through the vast majority of the book. Humor is probably one of the most difficult things to write, so when 90% of the humor lands, I consider that a success.
Kitty cited a lot of errors in her copy that was submitted to SPFBO, I’m not sure if he also submitted that copy to Amazon – but the copy I have (which I bought a while ago) also had a fair bit of spelling and grammar errors. Things like wrong words used, missing or extra commas, extra periods and things like that were found throughout the book. It didn’t take away from the enjoyment for me, but it could have used some polishing. My only other complaint about the writing would be a few too many info dumps. Most of the time info dumps drive me up the wall, I can’t stand it – but since many of these were done in a humorous way I didn’t find myself caring until I hit a few too many in a row that were just a bit too long, even if they were funny.
The pacing was alright, the prose was light and readable which made me turn the pages quickly, but it did take 40% of the book for the characters to start to come together to form the group. I would have tried to find a way to cut 5-10% of the first half of the book to get them together quickly.
Overall, this was a highly entertaining book and with just a little bit of editing and condensing, I may have given five stars instead of four. I do believe there is huge potential in this author to be a phenomenal comic-fantasy writer. With a touch more depth to the characters and tighter plotting, I could see myself giving out 5 stars to future work.
TLDR: D&D/MMORPG parody plotline, a group going on a quest, old school wizards, mysterious type magics, gods are real, entertaining characters, quick and light prose, plenty of humor. For people who enjoyed Kings of the Wyld.
Ratings:
- Plot: 12/15
- Characters: 12.75/15
- World-Building: 12.5/15
- Writing: 12/15
- Pacing: 11/15
- Originality: 12/15
- Personal Enjoyment: 8.5/10
Final Score: 80.75/100
BUY IT ON AMAZON – FREE ON KU
MARK IT TBR ON GOODREADS