Hilarious. And clever.

Great plotting, great story.

Loved the references. D&D, Game of Thrones, Leeroy Jenkins, etc. ( )

DNF 11%

Update: It has been a year and I have zero interest in finishing this book due to a case of "not my cup of tea." The writing is very good so potential readers should not run away from this book (and from the huge amount of positive reviews, it looks like my opinion is not the norm).

I am incapable of connecting to the type of comedy of this book at all. It might be a cultural thing and that I am not the correct audience. I just... I don't like the book at all and didn't find it to be even remotely funny. But I would not think twice before giving the author a second chance with future books, just as long as I don't have to slog through this one again because it would be torture. ( )

DNF 11%

Update: It has been a year and I have zero interest in finishing this book due to a case of "not my cup of tea." The writing is very good so potential readers should not run away from this book (and from the huge amount of positive reviews, it looks like my opinion is not the norm).

I am incapable of connecting to the type of comedy of this book at all. It might be a cultural thing and that I am not the correct audience. I just... I don't like the book at all and didn't find it to be even remotely funny. But I would not think twice before giving the author a second chance with future books, just as long as I don't have to slog through this one again because it would be torture. ( )

satire=yes, enjoyable=fairly, the characters are all flawed, which is good, but I am struggling to like any of them enough to continue reading. This does a better job than most at modeling the economics, however the military technicals continue to grate ( )

This is an amusing satire that is also a sword & sorcery adventure novel and is also social commentary. On the one hand it is quite enjoyable, and on the other I think it might have been even better if it were tightened up a bit. Don't get me wrong, it was a fun romp. But there were sections I felt ended up being unnecessary. One example is the section near the beginning where a big treasure is being divided and we spend a lot of time with minor characters as who gets what is all argued about as if it were the reading of a will. It was amusing (and I suspect it was the inspiration for the novel) but I don't feel it was really needed. Same with the training-montage-style section in the middle. And the bit that set up one of the MC's addiction at the beginning. I enjoyed the book, but I feel it could have been even tighter.

The humor was a mixed bag for me. I usually enjoyed it, but it got a little over the top on many occasions. The concept of D&D economics was amusing enough that I picked up the book, and there are lots of good bits in there, but some of the jokes missed their mark with me. Overall I did enjoy it, and I grew to like the characters (especially the goblin squire) but you have to be ready for the puns if you pick this series up.

I listened to the audiobook version, and the narrator did a great job with the voices. It was enjoyable to listen to, and it really enhanced the book to have the different languages spoken. The one exception to this was a section where some shadowkin (goblins and orcs) are speaking to one another, so what we hear is the shadowkin language overlaid with the English translation. I appreciated what they were trying to do (make it obvious that they were not speaking English) but I didn't like the way it worked. It appears that the direction was for the narrator to put emotion into the shadowkin part and then translate it completely flat without inflection, and I didn't like that. However, that's just one part of an 11.5 hour audiobook, so overall the narration was a win.

CW: addiction, race-based (as in goblin and orc) slurs and killing ( )