Reviews tagging 'Injury/Injury detail'

Going Rogue by Drew Hayes

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adventurous
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes

4.5

As the surprise and delight of the first book in this series is wearing off, I’m beginning to lose my grip on the enchantment that made me love NPCs. Don’t get me wrong, they’re still good books. Objectively not winning any awards, but entertaining, easy and fun to read, and possessing surprisingly great character depth and emotional resonance for a series whose foundation is poking fun at RPG tropes. But this one had a very rough start – mainly because this book has a much stronger emphasis on the meta storyline. 

I was fine with the meta story – the RPG players in the real world having some really weird experiences as our NPCs start making their own decisions – in the first two books. It was interesting in a “wouldn’t it be wild if stuff like that started happening in my D&D sessions” kind of way, but I wasn’t all that into it. (As you might have guessed from the fact that I barely mentioned it in my first two reviews.) I much preferred watching the band of trope-wise NPCs have to deal with the tropes anyway. But this book brings the meta story front and center, with Russell and company getting more involved, the three asshole players from book one getting their own section as they play with a new GM, and the reader (but not the characters) getting a sense that whatever is going on is significantly bigger than just some weird RPG modules. 

In the beginning, I did not vibe with it at all. I wanted to see our NPCs being adventurers, not these players trying to figure out what’s up with these modules. But by the end I accepted that this meta mystery is going to be the main plot probably from here on out, and at this point I am kind of curious. 

Of course, our pretend adventurers get a lot of the story as well, and have the bulk of it once the beginning gets done setting the hooks for the meta story. As you might guess from the title, Eric gets some skills upgrades, but all the characters are pretty well balanced. Timiscore starts working towards some goals, Gabrielle continues her small emotional arc from the previous book, we get to see some of Thistle’s insecurities that he’s kept hidden, and Grumph is working on a new way to be a mage that combines his magic and his physical abilities. It’s really good. I adore all of these characters and I love watching them work through situations that are straight out of a D&D adventure. 

The tone of the series is starting to shift, though, and I really noticed it in this book. There’s less focus on humor and poking fun at RPG tropes. The tropes are there, definitely, but the characters point them out less and roll with them more. Perhaps it’s because they’re adjusting to being actual adventurers and not just pretend ones, or perhaps it’s a symptom of the overall focus shift from satirizing tropes to the meta mystery. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but if the characters were less dynamic and lovable, I think I would have had a much more difficult time with the shift away from humor and satire and towards a more serious plot. 

I don’t think any of these books are going to make me reexperience the surprise and delight of NPCs. But they are still entertaining and solid adventures. I adore the NPC characters – all of them almost equally, which is rare for a book with so many protagonists – and Russell’s gaming group are pretty good. The meta mystery is a solid hook, the tropes are still there even if they’re not laughed at as much, and there is a great emotional core to the story. I am very much enjoying this series and I am definitely reading the next book. (Was there any doubt, though, really?) 
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