RATING: 4/5
SYNOPSIS
A brand new adventure fantasy: imagine Guardians of the Galaxyplanning a heist on Smaug’s gold, for fans looking for something with a modern twist and some humor.
Guardians of the Galaxy meets The Hobbit in this rollicking fantasy adventure.
It’s not easy to live in a world ruled by dragons. The taxes are high and their control is complete. But for one group of bold misfits, it’s time to band together and steal back some of that wealth.
No one said they were smart.
REVIEW
Hilarious, witty, fun, are the only words to describe this book!
This debut by Jon Hollins (a pseudonym for Jonathan Wood) reminds me so much of Kings of the Wyld by Nicholas Eames whereby the humor element shines strongly throughout the book. I literally laughed out loud when I’m reading this book! While some big words were used by Hollins, it does not dilute the humor element. Some may think that the a lot of vulgar words/descriptions were used, but seriously, I have no issues with that.
The plot of this story is also quite refreshing. This story took place in the world where Dragons ruled the society and humans are forced to pay crazy high taxes to the Dragons due to fear. We follow the main character Will, a farmer who, in the midst of running away from the guards of the Dragon Consortium for failure to settle his tax, met up with Lette (a mercenary who wanted to be “a better person” and seeks for a change in her life), Balur (Lette’s “tribe”, who is also a lizard man), Quirk (a scholar/professor and wizard who refuses to use magic due to her past life) and Firkin (a drunkard, who is also Will’s friend). All 5 of them (with Will as the group’s herald) initially came up with a plan to rob one of the Dragon, Mattrax, who ruled Will’s village. But such plan of course, did not go as well as they imagined. One heist plot lead to another and all plans turned out to be a disaster, except for the last plan where it was a success. In the midst of taking us through the action-packed plot, Hollins managed to bring the characters to life. The interactions between the characters are so engaging and fun!
I have to say, this series is a new breath to the fantasy genre. While we can see some usual fantasy tropes in this story (i.e. the medieval world building, greedy dragons who are crazily in love with gold), Jon Hollins still manage to step out from the usual classic fantasy genre by introducing the heist plots. And of course, i definitely enjoyed the epic battle with 5 dragons at the end of the book (even in such an epic battle, Jon Hollins still managed to make me laughed out loud)!
This book deserves a strong 4/5 star rating and I can’t wait to pick up the second book in this series!
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