Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 2 #7: After Image

Suddenly, you were gone, from all the lives you left your mark upon. I remember how we talked and drank into the misty dawn, I hear the voices. We ran by the water on the wet summer lawn, I see the footprints, I remember. Let’s feel the way we would after After Image, by Pierce Askegren.

Synopsis:

A mysterious stranger has designs on Sunnydale as the town prepares for an all-night season of horror films at the Drive-in and that is when things get very weird indeed. A werewold evaporates like a ghost before Buffy’s eyes and a sleeping sickness begins to sweep over the town.

Source: Goodreads [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/153186.After_Image]

SPOILERS BELOW

The plot of this Buffy licensed novel concerns the re-opening of a drive-in theater. Because nothing in Sunnydale is ever innocent, it turns out to be a plot by the nefarious Count Cagliostro to maintain his eternal youth by draining the life-force from audience members using ectoplasmic projections of characters from old grindhouse films. Now isn’t that just typical?

As far as licensed novels go, this one was pretty decent. It had a good pace, steadily advancing the plot without letting me get bored; it built up decent suspense about the villain by giving small glimpses of him through cutaway scenes before finally revealing him; it gave each of the Scoobies something to contribute to the plot… I wouldn’t exactly call it great literature, but compared to some of the other Buffy novels I’ve read, it delivers a competently told and executed story.

After Image is nothing special, but it’s a perfectly fine entry in the Buffy licensed novel series.

Final Rating: 3/5

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 2 #5: Bad Bargain

You poor unfortunate soul. It’s sad but true. If you want to cross the bridge, my sweet, you’ve got the pay the toll. Take a gulp and take a breath, and go ahead and sign the scroll. Let’s deal with Bad Bargain, by Diana G. Gallagher.

Synopsis:

“Off the rack gives me hives.” — Cordelia, “Out of Mind, Out of Sight”

The Scoobies are used to being personally affected when demonic nasties come to Sunnydale. And they’re used to strange things happening at Sunnydale High — after all, the place is built over the Hellmouth. But they’ve sealed the Hellmouth, so they don’t think anything’s out of the ordinary when items to be sold at the first annual band fund-raising rummage sale are stored in the school basement…which, one might recall, is directly above that Hellmouth.

Once the rummage sale begins, it’s clear the stuff for sale is far from ordinary. People seem to be strangely affected by the items they’re buying — things from undemonic homes, donated by undemonic people. So the reactions these items are producing are, to say the least, unexpected. Willow’s acting weird. So’s Xander. And even Buffy’s mom bought something….

The situation quickly spins out of control, and the school has to be quarantined…leaving Buffy and Giles to sort things out before whatever demon this is sells them down the river.

Source: Goodreads

SPOILERS BELOW

Bad Bargain concerns a rummage sale being held at Sunnydale High. Unfortunately, a large number of highly unpleasant vermin have escaped the Hellmouth and infested the items for sale, resulting in prospective shoppers coming down with a variety of infernal diseases and parasitic infections. As powerful of a Slayer as she is, pest control is a bit outside of Buffy’s wheelhouse; but it’s nonetheless up to her to put a stop to the infestation before it spreads.

This book struck me as one of the strongest Buffy tie-in novels I’ve read thus far, and the reason was the broad cast of characters. It features not only the Scoobies, but also Spike, Druscilla, Harmony, Snyder, and Jonathan. Not all of them are essential to the plot, of course; but it’s remarkable how much just giving them a few scenes to demonstrates their personalities and play off each other does to make this story feel like an integrated part of the rich and detailed Buffy universe rather than just an isolated dead-end of continuity featuring only the main cast and some non-canon characters who will never be mentioned again. What’s the point of having access to Buffy’s vast cast of supporting characters if you’re not going to use any of them, right? If a story must be padded with filler, let it be filler like this: amusing and engaging character moments that take advantage of the show’s established personalities.

So, overall, this ended up being one of the better Buffy tie-in novels.

Final Rating: 3/5

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 1 #1: Halloween Rain

This is Halloween, everybody scream. Won’t ya please make way for a very special guy?
Our man Jack is King of the Pumpkin patch. Everyone hail to the Pumpkin King, now! Let’s open our umbrellas for Halloween Rain, by Christopher Golden and Nancy Holder.

Synopsis:

Around Sunnydale, they say a scarecrow saturated with Halloween rain will come alive and slaughter anyone in sight. (Lovely place, Sunnydale.) Buffy’s best friends, Xander and Willow, used to think the tale was nonsense – but after a few adventures with Buffy, they’re not so sure.

Even without a maniacal scarecrow, a Sunnydale Halloween is a truly horrific happening. There are enough zombies and vampires about, ready to party hearty and eat some brains, to keep the Slayer and her friends up all night.

And then the rain starts to fall…

Source: Goodreads

SPOILERS BELOW

I recently reviewed a bunch of Buffy the Vampire Slayer licensed novels which I picked up at a used book sale. By coincidence, all of them happened to be from the Season Three line. That’s not very fair, I thought; to get a clearer view of the Buffy novels as a whole, I should sample a variety that includes a number from various different seasons. And where better to start than the very first licensed Buffy novel of them all: Season One book one, Halloween Rain.

The plot concerns a local Sunndydale legend that, when it rains on Halloween, an evil scarecrow comes to life and stalks the night. When zombies begin rising from their graves, Buffy ends up having to battle the demon behind it all: the Pumpkin King of Halloween. …Really. Yes, Xander does make the obligatory The Nightmare Before Christmas joke; how ever did you guess?

This book… wasn’t very good. Despite being fairly short, the plot felt slow-paced and dragging. It takes quite a while for any significant plot events to actually happen; and when they do occur, they feel bizarre and random. For instance: Buffy running into a zombie in a clown costume, which she mistakes for Mr. O’Leary, before learning that it’s actually Mr. O’Leary’s previously-unmentioned brother. Okay? Not to mention all the stuff that feels like filler, such as the two unnamed vampires hanging around who have no connection whatsoever to the Pumpkin King and seem to be there just to pad out the page count.

On the whole, Halloween Rain is a weak start to the Buffy novels.

Final Rating: 2/5

Minutes to Burn

‘Till everything burns, while everyone screams. Burning their lies, burning my dreams. All of this hate, and all of this pain; I’ll burn it all down as my anger reigns, ’till everything burns. Let’s count down Minutes to Burn, by Gregg Andrew Hurowitz.

Synopsis:

The scientific charge of The Hot Zone and the epic thrill of Jurassic Park converge in Minutes to Burn–an exhilarating new eco-thriller about a team of scientists and Navy SEALs stranded on an island in the Galapagos and fighting to survive an evolutionary catastrophe.

The year is 2007. Through widening holes of ozone depletion, the tropical sun burns human skin to a crisp. Powerful earthquakes and monstrous hurricanes wrack South America, exploding Ecuador’s already anarchic instability.

Cameron Kates, a hard-hitting Navy SEAL hiding the secret of her early pregnancy, gets pulled begrudgingly into a mission with her husband, Justin. Along with a ragtag squad of soldiers, ordered on this babysitting mission against their will, she must escort Dr. Rex Williams, a renowned ecotectonicist, to the chaotic continent. Rex is forced to brave the extreme and unprecedented dangers of such an expedition for one reason alone–so that he can position critical seismic equipment on Sangre de Dios, a desolate and depopulated island in the Galapagos. Others have recently vanished from the island without a trace.

Cameron’s platoonmates–a crackpot demolition expert, a chief who wears her brawn over her considerable intelligence, an unhinged lieutenant recovering from a personal tragedy–are an erratic but expert crew. Yet ultimately it is the newcomer, William Savage, a brooding Vietnam vet with raging warrior instincts, from whom Cameron must learn when the straightforward mission escalates into a battle for survival.

In the forest of the island awaits a scientific phenomenon the likes of which man has never witnessed. As the stunned scientists and soldiers furiously unravel the threads of the ecological mystery they’ve encountered, they discover that they’re trapped within a lethal, predatory battle where only the fittest survive. And the fate of the world is hanging in the balance.

Source: Goodreads

SPOILERS BELOW

So, I recently read and reviewed the book Wilder Girls. It was bad. At the time, it struck me as an attempted rip-off of The Southern Reach Trilogy, or possibly just of the movie adaptation Annihilation. However, the plot about the mutation-causing pathogen vaguely tickled my memories of another book I’d read long ago: Minutes to Burn. I didn’t really remember much about the book, than that I’d thought the way the monster was dispatched at the end to be pretty cool at the time, so I decided to re-read it and see if it still held up.

The novel is set in the distant, far-flung future of 2007 (…I told you it’d been a while since I read it). The Galapagos islands have been devastated by a number of natural disasters: massive earthquakes, violent hyper-hurricanes, the complete destruction of the local ozone layer, and most recently the appearance of mutant monsters. When contact is lost with a geological monitoring station, a squad of Navy SEALs is sent to investigate. They’re a pack of swaggering, cocky, macho hardasses, of the type seen in films like Predator and Aliens. Their overwhelming machismo is matched only by their staggering incompetence. Seriously, these bumblefucks manage to lose all their guns and ammo before even arriving at the island, acquire a speargun and lose that as well, and finally let their boat drift away and strand them, all before they’ve even encountered the monster.

So, it should come as no surprise that the monster – a gigantic praying mantis – manages to pick these stooges off one by one. Of course, once only Cameron is left, her Final Girl powers activate and increase her competence a thousandfold, thus allowing her to actually prevail in the end. I’m happy to say that my fond memories of the climax were not spoiled by the re-read, as the cleverness and tension of her Abatis trap still held up. Before I go giving the book too much credit, however, I should also point out that it ends with the type of generic cliched “or is it!?” stinger that always annoys me in horror stories, because they deny the narrative any closure. This is a stand alone work; it doesn’t need a sequel hook.

So, overall, I found Minutes to Burn to be a fairly typical work in the creature feature horror genre: big creepy crawly picks off cast of dumbasses one by one until the Final Girl emerges victorious. And it’s fine for what it is, delivering a story with enough character, worldbuilding, suspense, and action that I was able to get invested, rather than just dropping the book and howling with laughter at them losing their guns, ammo, speargun, and boat through sheer incompetence. Seriously, you’d think it would have been that breathtaking display, rather than the ending, that would have stuck with me over the years, because holy shit. I’d say that the book provides context which makes the circumstances of these losses more believable… but no, it really doesn’t. But anyways, once you get past that, you’re left with a decent monster story.

Final Rating: 3/5

Attack on Titan #1: Garrison Girl

It was like a nightmare. It’s painful for me, because nobody wants to die too fast. Remember the day of grief. Now it’s strange for me. I could see your face, I could hear your voice. Remember the day we met. Let’s stand guard with Garrison Girl, by Rachel Aaron.

Synopsis:

A novel of adventure, romance, and monsters…set in the dystopian world of Attack on Titan, the mega-hit manga and anime series.

An original novel, with all-new characters and a new story set in the world of Attack on Titan! Fans of the series and readers alike will enjoy this immersive and engaging experience of the pop culture phenomenon and manga mega-hit.
With the last vestige of the human race threatened by unstoppable carnivorous giants, a brave young woman decides to defy her wealthy family and join the military to fight against humanity’s enemies. But Rosalie Dumarque soon finds out that bloody sword fights with monsters aren’t the only dangers faced by the Wall Rose Garrison. Can she earn the trust of her fellow soldiers, stand up to a corrupt authority, navigate a forbidden romance…and cut her way out of a titan’s throat?

Source: Goodreads

SPOILERS BELOW

Attack on Titan is a very good manga series. Very popular, too. So popular, in fact, that it has managed to score an OEL young adult novel. (That’s Original English Language, for those of you not hip to the lingo). Well, I couldn’t very well resist checking that out, could I?

The novel I focused on the young noblewoman Rosalie Dumarque, who has an arranged marriage coming up and decides to spend her remaining independent months as a soldier in the Trost garrison. Since the beginning of the book establishes that these events are taking place about five years after the fall of Wall Maria, you can probably guess that this means she will be present for a certain significant event and happen to bump into a few cameoing canon characters. In the meantime, though, she has to struggle with her romantic feelings for her squad commander, a brooding man with a dark reputation and troubled past…

Okay, hold a moment. You might think from that description that this is really just a typical romance story dressed up in Attack on Titan clothing; but many of the details it’s concerned with actually tie in quite well with the manga’s rich and detailed setting. The arranged marriage thing, for instance – you probably think they tossed that in just because it’s a dime-a-dozen romantic cliche; but if you took a moment to consider, you’d realize the implications of Rosalie being from a noble family. As revealed in the Uprising arc, the highest-ranking nobles are all from different ethnic groups than the majority Eldian population of the Walls; so of course they would have arranged marriages as the norm, to avoid contaminating their lineage with the tainted blood of those who are the “descendants of devils”. Can’t risk their descendants being subject to the Coordinate, after all. See? It all ties together!

Now, are there slight continuity hiccups here and there? Of course, as can only be expected from a tie-in work produced while the source material is still ongoing and each new chapter of the manga could contain a revelation that upends everything we thought we knew. But it’s nothing too bad, really. Rosalie thinks that the gas that fills 3DMG tanks is compressed air rather than gas from iceburst stones; but that could be put down to her just not knowing about iceburst stones and making an incorrect assumption. A bit harder to finagle is the point where Rosalie reads The Count of Monte Cristo, which should not exist in Attack on Titan’s world. Maybe… it was originally “The Count of Marley Cristo”, and when it was brought within the Walls the censors changed “Marley” to the fictional “Monte”…. or, um, something like that…?

Okay, okay, I admit it! It really is just a typical romance story with Attack on Titan trappings: you’ve got the privileged girl rebelling against her strict and snobby family, who meets a dangerous bad boy who acts like a total asshole towards her including endangering her life, she finds his dickishness and occasional attempted murder to be super hot, and ultimately breaks off her arranged marriage in favor of him. Blech. Fortunately, the previously-mentioned Attack on Titan trappings that find their way into the story include the tone, so when the climax comes around we get to see a lot of characters die horribly to wash away the lingering bad taste left in our mouths by the romance portion. Where the book really shines, though, is when it focuses on exploring an important element of the Attack on Titan universe that was mostly relegated to set-dressing in the main series: cannon usage. Cannons in the manga seem to exist mostly to be shown plinking away ineffectively in the background while our heroes do the real work; but Rosalie, having trained as a cannoneer, shows how they can be employed to real effect even against such formidable enemies as the Titans. Bravo to the book in that regard.

So, yeah: while this book had its weaknesses, I enjoyed its original take on the Attack on Titan setting, and I wouldn’t be averse to more of these in the future

Final Rating: 3/5

The Tales of Pell #2: No Country for Old Gnomes

Get six pretty maidens to carry my coffin, and six pretty maidens to bear up my pall; and give to each of them bunches of roses, that they may not smell me as they go along. …Look, No Country For Old Men barely has a soundtrack, so this was this was the most closely related set of lyrics I could get. It’s from song produced by Carter Burwell, who also did “Blood Trails” for the movie’s end credits; that kind of counts as a connection of some kind, right? Let’s leave No Country for Old Gnomes, by Delilah S. Dawson and Kevin Hearne.

Synopsis:

The Skyr is a rich, verdant land claimed by both halflings and gnomes. For centuries, the halflings have worked to undermine gnomish power structures and seize total control–through legal means, certainly, but more insidiously through their extensive organized crime network. Now, threatened with being pushed out entirely, the gnomes are desperate and ready to fight back. Gustave the Goat King faces his first test as a leader: Can he bring peace to a fraught region or will a civil war consume the entire kingdom?

Source: Goodreads

SPOILERS BELOW

So, the first outing to Pell in Kill the Farm Boy ended up not being to my taste. But far be it from me to drop a serious because of a bad first impression; some take a while to find their footing, after all. Thus, I picked up the second book, hoping to find it more to my liking.

Unfortunately, it was not. No Country for Old Gnomes displayed the same flaws as its predecessor: introducing an overstuffed cast of protagonists that I had a hard time keeping track of, deciding that the least interesting ones were most worthy of attention and plot significance, and a juvenile sense of humor that revolves mostly around dirty puns, characters farting, and things and people getting covered in shit. Truly the height of hilarity. Is the goal of this series to convince me that Xanth wasn’t that bad after all? Because I remember those books being uncomfortable and cringey and all sorts of problematic at various parts, but I can’t recall ever finding them quite so disgusting as this.

Those plot, for what it matters, concerns a very broad assortment of characters getting drawn into a conflict between halflings and gnomes, which is being instigated by a halfling crime lord and an evil human noble as part of a grand scheme to acquire money and raise an army to overthrow the king. Not that it matters much, since it’s mostly just an excuse for the characters to stumble from one scene to the next, bumping into random encounters which are either complex build-ups to bad puns, parodies of well-known fantasy characters, or very contrived excuses for someone to get covered in shit.

I didn’t hate absolutely everything in No Country for Old Gnomes: I thought that having a Tom Bombadil expy swoop in out of nowhere and completely throw off the tone of a scene was actually fine as far as the parodic element went, Kristi eating that witch’s heart was pretty hardcore, and Fia making a cameo in a chainmail hadaka apron was… certainly an interesting mental image. On the whole, though, I didn’t enjoy this book; and it’s safe to say at this point that this serious is not my cup of tea.

Final Rating: 2/5

Of Fire and Stars #2: Of Ice and Shadows

Mighty lord of the winter snow, show me how to reach my goal. I need you my north, I’m the one for all. Magic rides to my tired eyes, dying sun for your color shy, and your dress now pink under fading lights. Let’s freeze Of Ice and Shadows, by Audrey Coulthurst.

Synopsis:

Princesses Denna and Mare are in love and together at last—only to face a new set of dangers.

Mare just wants to settle down with the girl she loves, which would be easier if Denna weren’t gifted with forbidden and volatile fire magic. Denna must learn to control her powers, which means traveling in secret to the kingdom of Zumorda, where she can seek training without fear of persecution. Determined to help, Mare has agreed to serve as an ambassador as a cover for their journey.

But just after Mare and Denna arrive in Zumorda, an attack on a border town changes everything. Mare’s diplomatic mission is now urgent: She must quickly broker an alliance with the Zumordan queen to protect her homeland. However, the queen has no interest in allying with other kingdoms—it’s Denna’s untamed but powerful magic that catches her eye. The queen offers to teach Denna herself, and both girls know it would be dangerous to refuse.

As Denna’s powers grow stronger, Mare does her best to be the ambassador her kingdom needs. Her knowledge of Zumorda and its people grows, and so too do her suspicions about the queen’s intentions. With rising tensions and unexpected betrayals putting Mare and Denna in jeopardy and dangerous enemies emerging on all sides, can they protect their love and save their kingdoms?

Source: Goodreads

SPOILERS BELOW

Of Ice and Shadows picks up shortly after the previous book’s ending, with Princesses Amaranthine (“Mare”) and Dennalia (“Denna”) traveling to Zumorda; both to warn the country about Sonnenborne’s plan to provoke a war between them and Mynaria, and in the hopes of helping Denna learn to control her unpredictable and dangerous magic. Personal melodrama results in the two of them temporarily splitting up, with Mare getting caught up in intrigue in the trade city of Kartasha while Denna learns magic under the harsh tutelage of the Dragon Queen herself. When a traitor helps Sonnenborne launch an attack on Kartasha, the two rejoin and reconcile just in time for the climactic battle. So, a pretty standard plot progression.

In the worldbuilding department, things took a less predictable course. In the previous book, the big ominous hinting of bad things going on behind the scenes was the Circle worrying that Mynaria’s ban on magic-users was resulting in a build-up of unused magic. That isn’t brought up in this book; instead we get much talk of the Six Gods abandoning Zumorda, the arid climate of Sonnenborne being a result of the country’s lack of magic, the existence of demigods, and a mysterious imprisoned seventh god, the God of Confluence. I’m interested to see if future books in the series can manage to make all these pieces fit together in a sensible way.

Overall, I found Of Ice and Shadows to be a decent entry in the series.

Final Rating: 3/5

Epic Failure #2: Communication Failure

What we’ve got here is failure to communicate. Some men, you just can’t reach. So, you get what we had here, last week. Which is the way he wants it. Well, he gets it. Let’s phone in Communication Failure, by Joe Zieja.

Synopsis:

In this sequel to Mechanical Failure, Captain Rogers, despite his best attempts to do otherwise, has become the acting admiral of the 331st Meridan fleet. His first task: worrying. A lot.

The rival Thelicosan fleet, under the influence of bad intelligence, a forbidden romance, and a communication officer with an eardrum injury, is about to break a two-hundred-year-old nonaggression pact. They have offered a vague, easily misinterpreted message: “We’re invading.” Rogers isn’t sure, but he thinks that’s probably bad.

War is hell, especially when you’ve forgotten how to fight one.

Source: Goodreads

SPOILERS BELOW

The second book in the Epic Failure series picks up where the first left off: our protagonist Rogers has been promoted to Captain and placed in charge of the Flagship, just in time for an enemy Thelicosan fleet to warp in and declare war. Once again, Rogers has to figure out a way to save the day, despite being completely out of his depth and having no idea what he’s doing.

Communication Failure disappointed me. While Mechanical Failure was iffy in places, it at least had the advantage of being a military sci-fi comedy – a genre I have not seen before, and which therefore was able to interest me through its novelty. While I didn’t care much for most of the characters, I was at least entertained by the combination of typical sci-fi trappings with a satire of incompetent military bureaucracy. In this one, however, the main plot revolves around the enemy commander being in love with Captain Rogers. Thus, in place of clever and innovative military sci-fi comedy, we get boring and tiresome romantic comedy. Ugh. While the first book had its flaws, they were far more bearable than the trite love triangle bullshit that drags on throughout this one. There’s a potentially somewhat interesting plot about a Jovian faction working to provoke war between the Thelicosans and the Meridans, but it’s smothered by all the unnecessary romantic drama and doesn’t come to the forefront until the end – by which time it’s too little, too late.

Communication Failure failed to be as entertaining as its predecessor.

Final Rating: 2/5

Wild Cards #27: Texas Hold’em

Dust bowl, Bible belt, got more churches than trees. Raised me, praised me, couldn’t save me, couldn’t keep me on my knees. Oh, boy, rave on down loop two-eighty-nine; that’ll be the day you see me back in this fool’s paradise. Let’s bet on Texas Hold’em, edited by George R.R. Martin.

Synopsis:

San Antonio, home of the Alamo, is also host to the nation’s top high school jazz competition, and the musicians at Xavier Desmond High are excited to outplay their rivals. They are also jokers, kids with strange abilities and even stranger looks. On top of that, well, they are teenagers, apt for mischief, mishaps, and romantic misunderstandings.

Michelle Pond, a.k.a. the Amazing Bubbles, thinks that her superhero (and supermom) know-how has prepared her to chaperone the event. But when her students start going wayward, she’ll soon discover the true meaning of “Don’t mess with Texas.”

Source: Goodreads

SPOILERS BELOW

The latest Wild Cards novel follows a school band of Jokers as they head to Texas to participate in a jazz competition, with the Amazing Bubbles acting as chaperone. Various hijinks ensure, as the kids manage to get themselves into all sorts of trouble – some of it as a result of the local bigot brigade, but some of it entirely self-inflicted.

My biggest problem with the book is that it lacks a big, central conflict. There are hate-motivated attacks against the Joker children, yes; but they are all small, individual incidents, not part of any scheme by a villainous mastermind. The way the anti-Joker protestors are presented in the narrative prevents them from coming off as a serious threat: a bunch of weenies toting misspelled signs does not make for a strong, menacing antagonist. The big, final climactic battle of the novel doesn’t involve the supposed antagonists at all, but instead results from Mr. Nobody getting drunk and reverting to his old Great Ape ways.

Of the storylines in the novel, I’d say that I enjoyed “Dust and the Darkness” the most as it had the highest stakes, on account of bringing in some actual credible villains. The strong personalities of Dust and the Darkness clashing as they were forced to cooperate also made for good character drama. With regards to the other stories, they introduced some characters I liked and thought were interesting or had potential – Antonia, Vicky, LoriAnne – but I felt that they didn’t get enough to do. Likewise, Adesina, Ghost, and Rustbelt are all characters that I’ve greatly enjoyed in previous stories; but here, they just kind of showed up and didn’t do anything. Drama requires conflict, and this book was sorely lacking in that respect.

Honestly, this book was pretty borderline. I felt like it had potential, in the setup and the characters it introduced; but it squandered that potential by failing to utilize the premise or cast in any meaningful way. Still, it had enough bright spots that I can’t write it off completely. Ultimately, I think I can let it skate by with a three; but it’s a low three, and I expect better from this series.

Final Rating: 3/5

The Tales of Pell #1: Kill the Farm Boy

I know exactly what I want and who I wanna to be. I know exactly why I walk and talk like a machine. I’m now becoming my own self-fulfilled prophecy. I’m gonna live, I’m gonna fly, I’m gonna fail, I’m gonna die. Let’s curse Kill the Farm Boy, by Delilah S. Dawson and Kevin Hearne.

Synopsis:

Once upon a time, in a faraway kingdom, a hero, the Chosen One, was born . . . and so begins every fairy tale ever told.

This is not that fairy tale.

There is a Chosen One, but he is unlike any One who has ever been Chosened.

And there is a faraway kingdom, but you have never been to a magical world quite like the land of Pell.

There, a plucky farm boy will find more than he’s bargained for on his quest to awaken the sleeping princess in her cursed tower. First there’s the Dark Lord who wishes for the boy’s untimely death . . . and also very fine cheese. Then there’s a bard without a song in her heart but with a very adorable and fuzzy tail, an assassin who fears not the night but is terrified of chickens, and a mighty fighter more frightened of her sword than of her chain-mail bikini. This journey will lead to sinister umlauts, a trash-talking goat, the Dread Necromancer Steve, and a strange and wondrous journey to the most peculiar “happily ever after” that ever once-upon-a-timed.

Source: Goodreads

SPOILERS BELOW

I picked up Kill the Farm Boy having heard that it was a fantasy-comedy which mocked, among other things, the trope of the farm boy who turns out to be the Chosen One destined for greatness. Given how often I complain in my reviews about “the chosen one” and “because destiny says so” being used as excuses to ignore actual characterization and rational plot development, I thought that this might appeal to my sensibilities. That was before I saw the tag-line on the cover, though: “Once. A pun. A time.”

Uh-oh.

Sure enough, when I opened the book, the obligatory setting map at the beginning was so stuffed full of bad puns being used as place names that I had flashbacks to Xanth. I read a lot of Piers Anthony’s Xanth books when I was an undiscerning child who was equally happy whether I was reading something widely acknowledged as a classic like The Phantom Tollbooth, or just the back of a cereal box. The Xanth books… now that I’m older and wiser and more refined in my tastes, they don’t exactly hold up all that well. So when I realized just how pun-heavy this story was going to be, I got a sinking feeling in my stomach.

Sure enough, the comedy portion of its fantasy-comedy genre turned out to consist of vulgar, lowbrow humor revolving around innuendo, bodily functions, and of course puns. In other words: very much not for me. And a humor book which doesn’t make you laugh is starting off in quite a hole. It would be left to the actual plot to try and bring me around.

The story kicks off with titular farm boy Worstley being informed that he is the Chosen One. However, in contravention of normal convention, he has actually been chosen by the villain, having been given the destiny of killing the king so that an evil usurper can take charge. To avert this fate, an adventuring party forms consisting of a number of characters: Gustave the magical talking goat, Fia the warrior, Agrabella the bard, Toby the Dark Lord, Poltro the assassin, and Grinda the Sand Witch. That’s… rather a lot of characters, particularly at the beginning before they’ve joined up when each is off in a different place pursuing a different goal. Unfortunately, not all of them are equally interesting; and my opinion of which characters I’d rather be reading about did not often align with which ones the story was interested in focusing on. In particular, Gustave, my least favorite character, ended up with the most plot significance.

It was difficult to come to a decision about a final rating for Kill the Farm Boy: while most of the humor didn’t do it for me, there were a few parts that made me chuckle; and while I didn’t like all of the plotlines, there were a few good ones, like the romance between Fia and Argabella. Also, it taught me the proper pronunciation of “demesne”, which is a word I’ve often seen written but never heard spoken. On the whole, though, the parts that didn’t work for me outweighed the parts that did, and so I can’t honestly recommend it. That said, there was enough good buried amongst the bad that I’m still willing to look into the sequel and see if things show any signs of improvement

Final Rating: 2/5