A review by mollyringle
As Flies to Wanton Boys by Allan Batchelder

5.0

I love what Allan did here: though keeping within the epic grimdark fantasy world created with the first volume, the plot flavor (if you will) of this one is more along the lines of mystery. The Queen has disappeared, there are virtually no clues as to what's happened to her, and our heroes from book 1 are dispersed to various places to find out what they can. It leads each of them into a crazy adventure of his or her own, some mostly comic, some mostly tragic, many a blend of the two. And I had truly no idea how the mystery (or rather, mysteries, since the questions multiply) were going to turn out, and was thus surprised by the ending. (But satisfied!)

That's actually one of the things I like best about Allan's writing: the whimsical delight and bawdiness thrown in to lighten up the grimdark. In fact, it sometimes made the darker parts catch me off guard and gave them more shock value. There was at least a death or two that made me suck in my breath in disbelief ("That didn't just happen?? No!!").

We also get a splash of romance in this one, which I really enjoyed, being all sentimental like that. Some of it even gets LGBTQ representation points, which was even more fun. And that ending--ha! Some quite incredible new twists to throw us into the next volume, whose plot flavor I can't even begin to imagine yet.

I...dare I say this?...yes.

Spoiler

I already ship Spirk/Ron. There. I said it. We'll see if that happens in the next book or what!