It was a free book, so it's all good

Kill The Farm Boy by Delilah S. Dawson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I had high hopes for this novel. I got it free at Phoenix Comicon/Comic Fest/Fan Fusion, which was very nice of the publisher, and I was eager to read it, especially because I like Kevin Hearne's books. (Still do.)

But...

...it didn't pan out. It looked funny and clever, but it didn't feel that way to me when I made myself push through it.

It's meant to be a comedic fantasy, and it is funny in bits, and it has some of the trappings of fantasy, though they are mostly subverted in a comic way. Some of that's funny, some isn't. Calling the Elven home Morningwood is kind of funny. Calling some towns Dismull, Bruding, and Sullene (for example) is pretty funny. Having a special wine called Amon Tiyado is kind of funny. (It comes in a cask.) In fact, many of the premises are funny, but not much of the action and dialogue. (IMO, of course.)

The map is by far my favorite part of this book. The towns in Kolon are pretty Mad Magazine funny. For reals. Take a look.

But even in a funny book, you want to care about somebody and something. And even in a funny book, filled with absurd ideas, you want to be able to sort of suspend disbelief. But that is made pretty hard. Impossible, for me. My connection to the characters and the action and their goals was bent until it broke, and so I stopped caring.

Almost nothing that is attempted is achieved. [Spoiler, unless you're past page 31.] The people we start with are not the people we end with. As the reader, you think you're following this character with this conflict, but then those things are abandoned. Now we're following a different character with a different conflict... and then something else. I get that we're subverting expectations, but it also undercuts caring. Or wanting to go on.

(There is a hint at the end that some of the narrative dead ends will actually be revisited in the next book. Action that seemed pointless might then be relevant again. I don't think I'll be going along for that ride, though.)

My favorite scenes were the ones played almost straight. [Slight spoiler follows.] The adventurers are caught in a net that makes them speak the truth, and that bit really worked for me. It made sense instead of nonsense, and humanized them enough that I cared about them again, for a little bit. And there were a few tastes of that here and there. A few places where the quest seems like a real quest, if somewhat silly. It didn't last.

I kept wishing for a Michael Bluth character, for one non-ironic, non-foolish character, the one the reader can identify with, the one who can comment on and anchor a ridiculous crew. But there was no anchor like this. No straight man, as it were. Every character was foolish. What they wanted and what they had to do to get there was equally foolish. There was no foil for the clown-car of misfit characters.

I thought I was more up for it than I was, I guess. I suspect that readers with a higher tolerance for (appreciation for?) absurdity and a more flexible attitude toward narrative structure will enjoy this a lot more than I did.

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