Customer Reviews

Web of Defeat (Quest For The White Duck)

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but this is still worth reading.

First let me correct what was glaringly wrong about the previous review.
A) This is not the conclusion of the series. The proper order of the books is Blood River Down, Web of Defeat, Agnes Day.
B) This is not about a drunk professional football player. It is about an unemployed hero who used to be a semi-professional American football player.

Second, let me say that the first book is much better. By this point, it seems that Mr. "Fenn" no longer had as much interest in writing this book as his fans had in reading it...a number of the jokes in the novel appear to be on the reader. Which is fine by me. Breaking the fourth wall in non-obvious ways is always fun.

There are spoilers for the first book in the series here, but not the second or third, so if you haven't read that, stop here.

The story centers on Gideon Sunday's attempts to alleviate his sister's condition. I.e., being a duck. Wherein Gideon travels to a new city in the land of Chey to ameliorate her duckish problems to also ameliorate her complaints about her love life. Let me say, here and now, that she was a much more charming character in the first book. Really, she complains A LOT.

The other characters here are amusing, however, including the overly amorous giantess required for the restoration of Tuesday Sunday's condition, the abysmal thief Jimm, and the magical masseuse, Bones Abber. (The names are not coincidental. They exist for a particularly amusing 1% joke somewhere about halfway through the story).

What really disappoints about this book are two things.

First, it is not as lighthearted as the first book in the series. In this novel, at least one major character dies. There is no one who dies in the first book. This is a bit traumatic to me, because I always thought that the first book was something of a children's story. The level of doom and gloom is generally much higher, and the payoff is never really worth it. It seems like tension for the attempt at provoking stronger feelings for the characters, but it doesn't work, because there is so much slapstick in the series. The ending, to a certain extent, recovers this nicely in a hilarious deus ex machina, but it was too little, too late.

Second, its too "questy". One of the nice things about the first book was that it was not so driven. Sure, Gideon has a quest, a goal, and things he has to do. But it is not nearly so linear. "Find a duck" and "Find this particular giantess in this particular town, and, oh yeah, find out what is causing this famine, and take care of the Wamchus while you are at it," are different. Ephemerally. Intangibly. And amusingly.

"Lionel Fenn"'s first book is a classic masterpiece that is too often ignored. It will be handed to my children with Jules Verne, Alexander Dumas, H. Rider Haggard (whom is amusingly referenced in this book - a fact that suggests, to me at least, that Mr. "Fenn" didn't really want to do this, so he inserted satire (and grammar lessons! SO FUNNY!) wherever he got bored during proofing.

This book is still better than a lot of the novels that get passed around by contemporary fantasy authors (anything by R.A. Salvatore comes to mind), but it just isn't quite as good as the first. If you read the first one, you may not mind this. If you haven't, and are only going to read one of them, go read Blood River Down. And then give it to a sad friend to cheer them up. Here is hoping book three is closer to book one than book 2.

C+

Harkius

Web of Defeat(or de-feet) is the third book in Lionel Fenn's Tales of the White Duck. It was one of the first humorous fantasy stories I ever read and therefore holds a special place in my heart. It was the first time I spent more time laughing while reading fantasy and learned that even adventures can be funny. This is the conclusion of a 3 book series that started with Agnes Day. It is the story of a white duck and a drunk professional football player, if I told anymore than that it would ruin the plot. If you can find this book, grab it. Unfortunately, I have lost my copies of this series and would enjoy reading them again