A witty and entertaining fantasy

If you like books that don't take themselves to serious and enjoy poking fun at typical fantasy as well as a lot of dungeons and dragon tropes, this is the book for you. I particularly enjoyed the concept of professional heroics described in this book and the answer to the question of 'What happens, if everyone wants to become a hero?'. It humanizes the heros and villains in a way that is done not often enough. The narration is fun and entertaining.

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Surprisingly good

The references to the Economics of the Hero-Business gave this book a fresh point oft view that I've not came across so far. It was witty and humorous but never too much.
Charakter Progression and story development were well done, too. I'll buy the second book for sure!

Only the audio / speech quality was not as good as audiobooks are usually nowadays. Or the speaker was not compatible with me :-) I had to listen at 90% speed.

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Orcs, Goblins and a Dwarf practice Class Struggle

Is it a good book? I can't answer that, but it definitely is funny and entertaining and on top of that, it is completely differently from your usual fantasy fare. Zachary Pike distorts the usual setting and characters. In Pike’s world Arth, heroes are murderous villains, constantly on the lookout for loot and plunder, while the Shadowkin, your usual monsters, are the proletariat and exploited slaves of mankind. It does not come as a surprise that the adventure industry in Arth puts out contracts on the killing of monsters and the loot provides huge profits to the investors. There are some hilarious parallels to our economy and stock market, but overall the approach is a little infantile and simplistic, but funny none-the-less. At least the effort to once sympathize with the little folks, has some merit.

Doug Tisdale gives voice and character to all the different Shadowkin, Orcs, Goblins, Dwarfs, Fairies, Trolls, you name it. He really did an outstanding job and listening to him is pure fun.

The storyline is not overly complex. Gorm Ingerson, a dwarf and former hero and sometimes berserker, who fell into disgrace by some mysterious past misfortunes, gets a chance to reestablish himself. He has to take on the suicidal quest of recapturing the stolen Elven marbles. In his company are a priest, a goblin, a bard, an elf, a solomancer, a necromancer, a weapons master and a troll. Most of them are pressed into the job, by a similar misconduct or misfortune in their past. Gorm, the protagonist of the narrative has not only to fight with the obsessions and egos of this bizarre team, powerful organizations took a huge interest into the outcome of the quest and some of them would rather see Gorm dead than alive.

It is decent entertainment to listen to the adventures of these eccentric heroes, if you do not expect too much. There is no nail biting tension or elegiac prose, everything is simple and straight forward. It is not the story, but rather the characters, you might grow fond of. If you have enough of soapy fantasy, this might be the right book.

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2 Leute fanden das hilfreich

Pratchett would be proud

Good shit. Very similar to Discworld novels - if you love them you will certainly like this.

Lots of likeable characters, engaging plot and funny references. Mature storytelling with juvenile fun. Great reader.

Very happy to look forward for more.

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