If I’m being honest, my expectations for this book were really, really low. It was a “You may also like” recommendation from my library’s audiobook app after I finished So You Had To Build a Time Machine, which was already a mark against it because that book had good ideas but was horribly done. I’ve read significantly more than my fair share of bad, mediocre, and just plain lazy high fantasy and fantasy RPG-themed novels. And honestly, it kinda had a “D&D nerd decided to write and self-publish a crappy novel” vibe, despite the fact that my library having it as an audiobook meant that was not the case. It made it onto my Low Standards list by concept alone, and I figured even if it didn’t turn out to be good, it did at least look like it wouldn’t be boring. 

I haven’t had so much pure fun with a book since the Zoey Ashe series. This is a story that sends up and takes down all of the D&D tropes. Classes, magic, dungeons, adventurers’ interactions with towns, quests, tournaments, monsters … I caught myself legitimately grinning with sheer delight at so many points. There was a twist early on that I saw coming from a mile away but still thoroughly enjoyed because it was so wonderfully done. Being NPCs, the characters were wise to the tropes, but since they were pretending to be adventurers they had to participate in the tropes anyway. Knowing what’s “supposed” to happen is fun because the characters know it too and they have to deal with this bullshit. It’s fantastic. 

And somehow, this highly entertaining book that feels like it should be lighthearted and pure fun also has remarkable emotional depth. There are genuine moments of poignancy and emotion and fear and sacrifice and despair and resignation. And somehow it didn’t clash at all with the entertainment and trope mockery. There is some actually really solid character growth – not incomparably amazing, but spectacular considering how much this seemed on the surface like a book that was here for laughs and nothing else. I actually like these characters. Actually, I love them. They’re growing up and changing and finding out new things and I actually really want to spend more books with them and see how they continue to grow and what new things they do. 

Getting to see the townsfolk’s side of the story when I’ve always been playing the adventurer coming through town was both strange and fascinating. If you wanted to, you could read a theme of what happens when you treat some people as not truly people into this story. Or you can just enjoy RPG tropes being subverted in the most entertaining way possible. (Really, this book will likely be much less entertaining if you don’t know much about fantasy RPGs and their tropes. I adored it because I’ve been heavily involved in D&D for the past three years; if you don’t have that context, you’ll probably like it significantly less.) 

I had really low expectations coming into this. I honestly thought it would be another for the DNF pile. But everything – the characters, the concept, the tropes and the characters’ awareness of the tropes, the emotion and growth – was spectacularly executed. I kept waiting for it to hit a turning point and disappoint me but it never did. My rule is to review the book I finished before I read the next book in the series, but I can’t express how tempted I was to throw that rule out the window and read book two IMMEDIATELY. So instead I wrote up the review within 24 hours of finishing the book just so I can let myself read book two. (How’s that for motivation?) I just had so much fun with this, and I can’t wait for the next one.