4/5 stars
Synopsis
Warning! This section contains spoilers. If you would like to avoid these spoilers, jump to the review below.
The book started off with an adventurer (adventurers were called Heroes in the book) clearing a farmer’s field of goblins. One last surviving goblin ran away, and the adventurer took off in pursuit. He chased the goblin until it collapsed from exhaustion on some leaves. Both goblin and adventurer were both surprised when the pile of leaves suddenly stood. It was a dwarf named Gorm who had been sleeping off a hangover under the leaves. Gorm tried to tell the adventurer to give him all of his stuff, but the adventurer didn’t listen, and Gorm proceeded to beat him up in order to take it. The goblin the Hero was chasing followed Gorm, and Gorm decided to help it by taking it to somewhere it would be safe. Gorm took the goblin to a city to get non-combatant papers for him from someone who owed Gorm a favor.
A tracking spell found Gorm, followed closely by someone who he was trying to avoid. This person told Gorm to follow him or else. This was where the reader learned that Gorm was being hunted because he fled from a quest, leaving his party members to die. Except for one who was able to kill the monster they were hunting. Gorm was branded as a deserter, which was against the rules for the Heroes guild.
Gorm was pressured into service of the Al’Matta Temple to go on a quest with other Heroes. The thing about the quest that made Gorm mad was no one had ever survived the quest. He had to go and help the person who “recruited” him recruit another person. This person used to be an amazing Hero, but she was now a drunkard.
Gorm and the other recruited Heroes had to go in front of the king to get his blessing.
He decided to train the group of other Heroes to actually be a group instead of people who dislike each other.
Gorm received some information from a pet kobold regarding the marble statues he was tasked with finding that led him to seek an orc.
The group went to one spot to check for the things they were trying to find but they didn’t find them, so they then went to a spot they weren’t wanting to go because it was such an awful place.
Gorm and company weren’t able to find the statues, so they went back to a nearby town. Gorm went outside and was kidnapped by a troll. The troll took him to the woods to talk. The troll was enamored by an elf in the party so he wanted to tag along.
Gorm was trying to find out more about something called Project Leviathan because there was a weird symbol stamped on the statues he was trying to find. So he went and talked to an Orc tribe.
The characters went to a necromancer’s tower to look for the statues. While they were there, the necromancer came back.
After turning in the quest, Gorm realized something wasn’t right about everything. And then they were betrayed. I honestly didn’t see the betrayal coming, so it was a pleasant surprise.
Review
I enjoyed Gorm’s character, and I enjoyed seeing how he grew throughout the story. He was a cranky curmudgeon who was tough to get close to, but he was a good person underneath the gruff exterior. More and more of the good person that he was shone through the further the story progressed.
This book is described as a satire in the title, but it wasn’t really satirical. On Amazon, it is categorized as Humorous Fantasy. The book description said the book was funny; I didn’t find it to be funny. It was more serious than funny, although there were a few funny moments. In my opinion, the book title and description were misleading. The book was slow in the beginning and was a little hard to get into, but it was really good at the end.
There were frequent character viewpoint shifts that didn’t really make sense at the moment I was reading them. A lot of them were point of view shifts to random people who never showed up again. But at the end, a lot of the threads were tied into the story, which was nice. It was just annoying when I was reading through the story because I couldn’t see any purpose to those viewpoint shifts.
I liked how this book challenged the stereotypes of fantasy. The orcs and goblins and the troll were labeled as evil, but they were actually just people. There were good and bad people among them, just like there were good and bad people among the humans and the elves.
The thing that mainly drove the book was economics. It was a different take on the classic fantasy tale. I had a hard time understanding the way the economics all worked, but I liked the story.
Fireheart Books 