thistlechaser: (Default)


NPCs (Spells, Swords, Stealth Book 1) by Drew Hayes.

Quick synopsis: Adventures in a D&D-like world.

Brief opinion: [Originally read in 2015, review here.] Ten years ago I rated this book as "Loved", but a decade later I had the opposite feeling about it.

Plot: The story started in the real world. A group is playing Dungeons and Dragons Spells, Swords, & Stealth. The players are all young boys (teens? pre-teens?) and they're just the worst, most miserable people ever.

Their characters got killed and the story shifted to the game world -- how all the NPCs in the game world react to four people just falling over dead (the PCs had earlier eaten poison mushrooms by mistake).

The story follows four NPCs and they take the roles the PCs had had -- they become adventurers.

Writing/editing: The writing style didn't work for me and there were a couple of editing issues.

What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: I liked the idea of this story, but for some reason it was such a slog to get through. I kept wanting to DNF it from the 20% point or so on, but I had loved it in 2015, so I thought the issue was me.

By the 50% point I didn't care what the issue was, I just wanted to DNF it, but instead I kept pushing through. I finished it, but I wish I had dropped it early on -- I didn't enjoy it at all at any point.

Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved: ⭐️⭐️ - Disliked

DNF #31: The Werewolf's Guide to Life: A Manual for the Newly Bitten by Ritch Duncan and Bob Powers. A fiction non-fiction book. As the title says, it was like a reference manual for werewolves. No plot, just a reference manual.

There was nothing wrong with it, and it was even kind of interesting, but without a plot I had no drive to read it. Still, I got more than a third of the way through it.

DNF #32: The Misfit Soldier by Michael Mammay. I really disliked the main character and the writing style, so I checked reviews and saw my initial feeling on the book was correct (plus it's sexist, though I hadn't gotten far enough in to see that yet). DNFed early on.
thistlechaser: (Book with cat 1)
NPCs by Drew Hayes
Rating: Loved (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)



NPCs was one clever, fun book.

The story started with a bunch of young boys sitting around a table, playing Dungeons and Dragon-- er, Spells, Swords, & Stealth. Most of the players didn't take it seriously/weren't playing well, they were doing the "my character is everything I wish I was! Killing everything! Taking no back-talk! Getting all the treasure! 100% perfect!" thing that new players do. As such, they tended to die. A lot.

Their characters died (stupid death, too) and the story didn't miss a beat -- it continued on with how the NPCs of the D&D/SS&S campaign world reacted to the adventurers dying. I was tickled and amused to see that! What a fun idea! I've never seen a story like that before!

Most of the story followed those NPCs as they formed a party and tried to take over the roles of the PCs who had died. It was so believably handled, and so much fun. (I keep coming back to that: This was such a fun, clever idea.)

I wavered between rating this a Liked and a Loved, because the middle dragged just a tad (there was a fight scene that I swear went on for a third of the book), but everything other than that one part was so darned enjoyable, I went with Loved rating.

An extra fun side note: The main character's name was Thistle! The same name I've used online for decades! That tickled me so endlessly.

I already have the second book in this series (Split the Party) and will be reading that next.

---

The Time Garden by Edward Eager
Rating: Okay (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)



While there was nothing wrong with this book, it didn't hold my interest at all. The only thing I semi-enjoyed about it was the glimpse of a much older world (it was published in the 50s or 60s). None of the children came off as children to me, though that could have been because of the datedness -- maybe kids of the 50s did speak like the ones in this book.

I didn't reach the 50% mark, thus the book doesn't count towards my total for the year.

Profile

thistlechaser: (Default)
thistlechaser

July 2025

S M T W T F S
  1234 5
6 789101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
2728293031  

Syndicate

RSS Atom

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Aug. 26th, 2025 07:36 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios