Review: Orconomics: A Satire

Orconomics: A Satire by J. Zachary Pike
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was unusual in several ways.

Firstly, it was based pretty obviously not just on the sword-and-sorcery genre, but on Dungeons and Dragons--even down to the party arguing about shopping and adding up points and levels. That's not unusual. What's unusual is how well it's done, in general; that it's not only witty, but also deeply serious and in places outright tragic; and that it's a satire on our world's financial institutions and their corruption, as well as a tale of sword-and-sorcery adventure.

It's generally well edited, though there are slips; occasional misplaced apostrophes, a dangling modifier, and "the sleight that the wizard had inferred" when the author means "the slight that the wizard had implied". I suspect an author that made a lot of mistakes and an editor that didn't quite catch all of them (because editors, too, are human).

Still, the story is strong, the characters manage to rise above being cliches, the satire hits pretty hard on its target, and I'm seriously considering getting the sequel.

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