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For the past year or so, I have been a follower of "Zero Punctuation", a weekly cartoon video game review feature of The Escapist that is the product of Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw, an Englishman living in Australia. "Zero Punctuation", named for its motor-mouthed style, is wonderfully obscene and funny, which is why I follow it even though I do not purchase home computer video games (the subject matter of Yahtzee's reviews) and know nothing about 99% of the games reviewed.
Yahtzee recently published a novel, a fantasy called "Mogworld," which my husband pulled off a bookstore rack for me under the innocent misapprehension that, since I enjoy Yahtzee's video reviews I would be interested in his writing. Having checked out Yahtzee's personal website awhile ago and found most of the writing there to be way too nihilistic and depressing for my taste,* I eyed the book with trepidation but, moved by curiosity, I bought it anyway, and read it.
I was pleasantly surprised. Not by the quality of the writing; I knew, from Yahtzee's other works, that he can write well. Nor was I surprised by the style of the humor; it was cynical and mordant, rather like Zero Punctuation. But I was surprised by the quality of the plot, the strength of the characters, and by the fact that, strangely enough, he went for a happy ending, of sorts.
I read most of the book convinced that he *was* going for a nihilistic downer of a story, and nearly threw it at the wall at several different points. But a gloom-and-doom nihilistic ending is not where the story ultimately goes. The story ends up at a surprising place, which in light of what's gone before turns it almost into a modern morality play with a quasi-libertarian twist. I can't say anything more, really, without spoilers (and I may have said too much already), but I recommend it, both for Yahtzee's existing fans and fantasy readers interested in a book that thinks outside the box. Literally.
* Yahtzee's old static site has been replaced by a blog that looks a lot like his Zero Punctuation reviews; I need to check it out.
Yahtzee recently published a novel, a fantasy called "Mogworld," which my husband pulled off a bookstore rack for me under the innocent misapprehension that, since I enjoy Yahtzee's video reviews I would be interested in his writing. Having checked out Yahtzee's personal website awhile ago and found most of the writing there to be way too nihilistic and depressing for my taste,* I eyed the book with trepidation but, moved by curiosity, I bought it anyway, and read it.
I was pleasantly surprised. Not by the quality of the writing; I knew, from Yahtzee's other works, that he can write well. Nor was I surprised by the style of the humor; it was cynical and mordant, rather like Zero Punctuation. But I was surprised by the quality of the plot, the strength of the characters, and by the fact that, strangely enough, he went for a happy ending, of sorts.
I read most of the book convinced that he *was* going for a nihilistic downer of a story, and nearly threw it at the wall at several different points. But a gloom-and-doom nihilistic ending is not where the story ultimately goes. The story ends up at a surprising place, which in light of what's gone before turns it almost into a modern morality play with a quasi-libertarian twist. I can't say anything more, really, without spoilers (and I may have said too much already), but I recommend it, both for Yahtzee's existing fans and fantasy readers interested in a book that thinks outside the box. Literally.
* Yahtzee's old static site has been replaced by a blog that looks a lot like his Zero Punctuation reviews; I need to check it out.
amused
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