Customer Reviews

One Quest, Hold the Dragons (Cups and Sorcery)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is great! Timeaus and his friends ( minus Gimli who wet to visit his family ) try to get the magic statue to Statius's Scepter, and have the statue stolen! Non-stop fun! Watch for Vic!

Just when things had begun to take on a normal shade of boredom, Timaeus d'Asperge, and his companions are propelled on another quest. This time, they must accompany Cincianus Polymage, a man of seemingly limitless power but limited sanity, to undo the magic of the statue. However, there are still many (many, many) who want the statue; can our heroes keep the statue and take it all the way to foul Arst-Kara-Morn?

This book is great, even better than the first one (Another Day, Another Dungeon)! At times I found myself laughing out loud. Mr. Costikyan somehow succeeds in making a wonderful admixture of action and comedy. I highly recommend this book, and hope that there will be yet another sequal.

By the way, I'm still a little unclear on the whole "greep" thing, but would like to try some, myself!

Volume one, Another Day, Another Dungeon (Cups and Sorcery, Book 1) used interesting magic, and spoofed the Dungeons and Dragons genre of tabletop game players in an amusing and successful manner. It used a 'greeps' recurring pun which I wasn't a fan of, but other gamers seem to find hilarious. That's back in book two, which essentially took the elements of book one, and attempted to take them up a notch.

I kept waiting for this novel to become good, or least make me laugh. The author kept making jokes at the expense of everything else, and it just ruined the story for me. Characterization is abysmal and one dimensional. Plotting is haphazard. Setting is not well described. Pacing is slow (new characters are introduced, followed, and then abandoned).

The first 125 pages rehashed Robin Hood. The second 125 pages rehashed Shakesperean Italy, heavy on the pointless duels over offended pride and accented language. The climactic battle was ok. The end wasn't an end; the quest was nowhere near finished. I think the author went 'too experimental' in the direction of plays (rather than a novel), he evens ends with the word 'Intermezzo'.

If you read the first one, you might remember Kraki the Barbarian, who could basically hack and slash anything out. Stereotypical, yet fun. In the sequel, Kraki serves the role of soccer ball (suddenly all the monsters kick him around). He doesn't shine. He is not a hero. Similarly, no one is the party is. They are present, warm bodies in a confused party of adventurers meandering from one situation to the next, blindly chasing after the statue, and completely overshadowed by the jokes the author is constructing, which always make them look like one-dimensional fools.

I wasn't a fan of the book because the geek humor is laid on too thick, to a point where the characters only serve as punchlines, and not as storytelling. I wanted to see the barbarian hack & slash, the wizards do spells, you know, the typical adventure with funny bits. Instead of that, it's more like the characters are so incompetent, the adventure got canceled, but here's a bunch of RPG jokes.