A review by bluejayreads
Siege Tactics by Drew Hayes

5.0

This series is dramatically evolving from what it was when it started. But I’m enjoying the new direction quite well. 

This book, especially compared with the previous book, had significantly less of the meta storyline. I didn’t mind this – by the end of Going Rogue, I’d accepted that the meta storyline was going to be a bigger part of the rest of the series, but I still like the fantasy world shenanigans with the main cast of NPCs better. What this book did have more of was the PCs played by Russell and his RPG-playing party. I think most of it was to illustrate what the NPC protagonists were learning about the Bridge, but I actually enjoyed it. I’m kinda starting to like the PCs, and I think chances are high they’re going to break free of Russell’s group’s influence at some point in the future. That could be very fun. (It would also be an absolutely astonishing amount of characters to balance, but this series seems to have no problems balancing large amounts of characters.) 

The cast of NPCs-turned-adventurers, though, are still my absolute favorite. I adore all of them, and I love how they can take turns in the limelight without any of them falling too far into the background. They’re distinct and unique individuals, but they’re also a coherent and almost entirely unified group. I love their group dynamics, their emotions, and the way they grow. Timiscore really shone in this one, and Gabrielle and Thistle got some of the spotlight as well. In many ways, Thistle is the heart of the group, but they’re all in this together and I love them all so much. 

Though there is a bit of adventuring stuff, like exploration and combat, going on in this book, it’s much more about finding answers. The NPCs learn some about how the world works, quite a bit about how magic works, and a little about the Bridge and its whole deal. We also learn a bit more about Fritz (I knew she would be back! I didn’t expect her so soon though), although what we do learn raises a bunch of other questions. And as we learned more about the world and what’s happening, understanding began to dawn (on both me and the NPCs) about the true stakes in this story. 

For a series that started as mostly a humorous fantasy poking fun at RPG tropes, it had some surprising serious notes and emotional depth. At this point, there’s almost no humor left. A dark, sinister underlying plot has been slowly rolling into motion and now it’s moved forward enough that we’ve noticed it. And it’s still picking up momentum and catching the NPCs in its cogs. Over the course of the past few books, this series transitioned from humor with an emotional heart to serious and high stakes with far-reaching consequences even into the real world. And now that I’ve figured out that’s what it’s doing and stopped comparing it with NPCs, I’m back on board with this series being 100% awesome again. 

This whole series is brilliant. It grabbed me with a funny mockery of fantasy RPG tropes, kept me hooked with loveable and endearing characters, surprising emotional depth and resonance, and an interesting meta element, and deftly transitioned the story from light satire to something deeper and darker, full of magical questions and twisty sinister plots with high stakes for multiple worlds. Whenever I start to expect something from this series, it ends up being so much better than I dreamed. I am loving it. 
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