17 April 2019

Books: Kill The Farm Boy By Delilah S. Dawson and Kevin Hearne (2018)



"Once upon a time, in a faraway kingdom, a hero, the Chosen One, was born . . . and so begins every fairy tale ever told. This is not that fairy tale. There is a Chosen One, but he is unlike any One who has ever been Chosened. And there is a faraway kingdom, but you have never been to a magical world quite like the land of Pell. There, a plucky farm boy will find more than he's bargained for on his quest to awaken the sleeping princess in her cursed tower. First there's the Dark Lord who wishes for the boy's untimely death . . . and also very fine cheese. Then there's a bard without a song in her heart but with a very adorable and fuzzy tail, an assassin who fears not the night but is terrified of chickens, and a mighty fighter more frightened of her sword than of her chain-mail bikini. This journey will lead to sinister umlauts, a trash-talking goat, the Dread Necromancer Steve, and a strange and wondrous journey to the most peculiar 'happily ever after' that ever once-upon-a-timed."

While Kill The Farm Boy is supposed to humorous fantasy story, it’s not very deep (and I read a lot of Piers Anthony and Craig Shaw Gardner in the 80s and 90s that have more depth than this book), but it’s still rompish. However, I never really did find anything about it engaging, the plotting is sluggish, the characters dull, stupid, and pointless and the humor childish. Yes, at times, there are few good jokes here and there, some which might make you even chuckle, but most are of the eye-rolling variety, as if the continuous joke of a goat pooping out pellets would be not only funny once, but funny 360 more times throughout the book.

Ultimately, this book made me angry, as this genre is always ripe for satire. But I could not wait to get it over with –as a matter of fact, I threw it across the room and said screw it. It’s rare for me to hate a book this much and I guess I have to give props to both Dawson and Hearne for producing such a trashcan fire of a book and then get it published.

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