Review: Thurmond's Saga: Being a Recounting of How a Young Peasant Lad Sought Renown as a Slayer of Fell Beasts

Thurmond's Saga: Being a Recounting of How a Young Peasant Lad Sought Renown as a Slayer of Fell Beasts by Robert John MacKenzie
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I wavered between three and four stars. It's mostly OK, but the plot is overly reliant on coincidence and luck for my taste. Near the end, it looks like the author is setting up a whole lot more book, then he seems to realize that he needs to finish it and just wraps up all the remaining plot threads, some in not particularly likely ways.

He should definitely get someone other than his kids to copy edit it before publication. Someone whose vocabulary is better than his, and who checks carefully for homonyms - just because spellcheck says that there's a word spelled that way doesn't mean it's the word you meant.

The setting is a gritty, more-than-usually-realistic medieval fantasy world. There's a high body count, the nobility are bastards and the peasantry can't really win, and goblins and their like are uncomplicatedly evil, rightful targets for violence and looting because they engage in so much... violence and looting. Plus they're ugly, and uncultured, and don't look like us.

It's more or less a D&D slashfest, with the low-level main characters overpowered by design and thrown a ridiculous amount of luck so that they can survive the adventure and come out of it more-or-less triumphant. It's not without its charm and humour, and the protagonist learns some good life lessons, but overall, for me it was less than successful.

I received a review copy via Netgalley.

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