The Dungeoneers by Jeffery Russell
Oct. 19th, 2015 06:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroDurham is a town guard without much going for him until one day when he’s requested to join an expedition by a group of dwarves aiming to clear out a dungeon. Will they recover the fabled Mace of Guffin, and given other complications, will anyone care when they do?
Another case of someone who wants to be Terry Pratchett, and while he’s not quite there, he does a decent job. There are some clever and funny bits, though perhaps not quite enough for a full novel, even a quick read like this. The action scenes get a bit messy, because he gets bogged down in the descriptions of elaborate bone-monsters and it’s hard to keep track of who’s where and which skull they’re crushing. Also, there are two dozen dwarves and I only could remember useful details of, like, three of them.
Many an essay has been written (and many a game ruined) about the idea of doing dungeon-crawling “smart”, by bringing in overwhelming force, using chickens and barrels as trap-finders, and grabbing the furnishings to sell as loot. This novel posits a group of dwarves whose entire living is based around tackling dungeons in this manner, which makes the process more “methodical” than, y’know, an adventure. I have to wonder how much of this came straight from the guy’s personal campaign.
That set, though, breaks down around the halfway point when the actual nature of the threat inside the dungeon becomes clear. At which point he starts setting up tropes and knocking them down just as quickly, and makes a major plot point hinge on a poop joke—which didn’t work not because it wasn’t funny (or even because Critical Failures used basically the same gag)—but because most of the other humor was a bit more highbrow and it stuck out as needlessly juvenile.*
There’s also clearly a massive amount of worldbuilding here, which again makes me wonder if this is his personal campaign that he’s spun a story into, or if he’s got separate plans for it as a published campaign setting.
* The thing is, the question of “What to dwarves have up their kilts?” is also juvenile, but the answer, “more long, luxurious beards” is actually reasonably classy.
Overall: Quick read, holds together decently well upon examination but not terribly worth going out of your way for. I was amused, but not enough to search out more by the author.
Another case of someone who wants to be Terry Pratchett, and while he’s not quite there, he does a decent job. There are some clever and funny bits, though perhaps not quite enough for a full novel, even a quick read like this. The action scenes get a bit messy, because he gets bogged down in the descriptions of elaborate bone-monsters and it’s hard to keep track of who’s where and which skull they’re crushing. Also, there are two dozen dwarves and I only could remember useful details of, like, three of them.
Many an essay has been written (and many a game ruined) about the idea of doing dungeon-crawling “smart”, by bringing in overwhelming force, using chickens and barrels as trap-finders, and grabbing the furnishings to sell as loot. This novel posits a group of dwarves whose entire living is based around tackling dungeons in this manner, which makes the process more “methodical” than, y’know, an adventure. I have to wonder how much of this came straight from the guy’s personal campaign.
That set, though, breaks down around the halfway point when the actual nature of the threat inside the dungeon becomes clear. At which point he starts setting up tropes and knocking them down just as quickly, and makes a major plot point hinge on a poop joke—which didn’t work not because it wasn’t funny (or even because Critical Failures used basically the same gag)—but because most of the other humor was a bit more highbrow and it stuck out as needlessly juvenile.*
There’s also clearly a massive amount of worldbuilding here, which again makes me wonder if this is his personal campaign that he’s spun a story into, or if he’s got separate plans for it as a published campaign setting.
* The thing is, the question of “What to dwarves have up their kilts?” is also juvenile, but the answer, “more long, luxurious beards” is actually reasonably classy.
Overall: Quick read, holds together decently well upon examination but not terribly worth going out of your way for. I was amused, but not enough to search out more by the author.
