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Read for book club.
So, Matt Colville runs a company in the RPG world and has a popular Youtube channel. I'm a big fan, and have watched most of his stuff as well as listened to a couple of D&D campaigns that he's run on stream. In the early years, before his company took off, he would usually comment at the end of his videos that he had a couple of self-published fantasy novels.
I wasn't super sure that "RPG advice I like" would translate well to "book I like," but I was pleasantly surprised with this book. Initially I was only reading it on my own, but after getting into it I decided to choose it as a book club read.
--Some spoilers follow--
I mostly really liked Heden as a main character. The fact that he starts out as an older, basically retired adventurer is neat. He is a priest (or cleric in D&D terms), which tends to be more of a supporting figure to fighter/wizard/rogue heroes. I love the image that he finally bought the bar that he always wanted to own, but has never opened it. I'm not especially knowledgeable about PTSD, but I thought it was an admirable choice to try to portray how it would play out in a fantasy setting.
I *mostly* thought the book avoided problems in its portrayal of women, which tends to be a problem in fantasy. I can think of basically one scene that involves women/sex stuff that I thought could have been handled better.
The mystery is an interesting one and I kind of think only a self-published author could really have gotten away with having it resolve in the utter failure of the protagonist, which I thought was a bold and successful choice. The mystery-solving with the knights could get a little tedious at times, but I thought it was a pretty realistic portrayal of how it would go with a non-super-sleuth person trying to just figure stuff out by talking to people. The idea of the knights order was cool, although I think there could have been a lot fewer of them as there were only a few distinct personalities.
I liked it enough to read the sequel...which unfortunately I didn't like as much!
So, Matt Colville runs a company in the RPG world and has a popular Youtube channel. I'm a big fan, and have watched most of his stuff as well as listened to a couple of D&D campaigns that he's run on stream. In the early years, before his company took off, he would usually comment at the end of his videos that he had a couple of self-published fantasy novels.
I wasn't super sure that "RPG advice I like" would translate well to "book I like," but I was pleasantly surprised with this book. Initially I was only reading it on my own, but after getting into it I decided to choose it as a book club read.
--Some spoilers follow--
I mostly really liked Heden as a main character. The fact that he starts out as an older, basically retired adventurer is neat. He is a priest (or cleric in D&D terms), which tends to be more of a supporting figure to fighter/wizard/rogue heroes. I love the image that he finally bought the bar that he always wanted to own, but has never opened it. I'm not especially knowledgeable about PTSD, but I thought it was an admirable choice to try to portray how it would play out in a fantasy setting.
I *mostly* thought the book avoided problems in its portrayal of women, which tends to be a problem in fantasy. I can think of basically one scene that involves women/sex stuff that I thought could have been handled better.
The mystery is an interesting one and I kind of think only a self-published author could really have gotten away with having it resolve in the utter failure of the protagonist, which I thought was a bold and successful choice. The mystery-solving with the knights could get a little tedious at times, but I thought it was a pretty realistic portrayal of how it would go with a non-super-sleuth person trying to just figure stuff out by talking to people. The idea of the knights order was cool, although I think there could have been a lot fewer of them as there were only a few distinct personalities.
I liked it enough to read the sequel...which unfortunately I didn't like as much!