NPCs by Drew Hayes

NPCs
by Drew Hayes
Pages: 234
Date: May 12 2014
Publisher: Self
Series: Spells, Swords, & Stealth (1st in series)

Review
Rating: 4.5 out of 5.0
Read: February 16 2016

This is the first book I’ve read by this author.

I’m not really sure what to write about this book. I was looking for something relatively light and fluffy with the potential of humor. This book popped up on my radar, I noticed it was on Kindle Unlimited, so I tried it.

I was actually unexpectedly surprised, as opposed to expectedly surprised I suppose. Hmms. Let’s see. Bah.

I was actually surprised by how much deeper this book turned out to be on a certain level. Sure, it’s still mostly fluffy, but there were elements I did not expect to find that made things seem more real. This, in its way, is the point.

Right, so, anyone not read the book description? Well, in case you didn’t: Four adventures roll into town. Visit a tavern. Drink some mead and then promptly slump over dead. Four others were in the tavern when this event occurred. All four are town people, and, in another realm, NPC. Non-player characters. They ‘spring to life’, so to speak, when they spot the four people slumped over. They investigate, and discuss what to do with the bodies. Well, first what to do with the passed out people, but it quickly turns to what to do with the dead bodies once the four realize that they are dealing with death not passed out drunks. One thing leads to another and the four realize something super important – the four adventurers have an invitation from the king. The king known for being, let us say, overly eager to burn and pillage his own people. Any excuse will do. Four dead people traveling under his invitation? Perfect excuse to burn and pillage, say, the village the four people are standing in. The same village they happen to live in and most of whom have family living in. They, naturally, examine the possibility of disposing the bodies as far away from the village as possible. There’s a slight chance that might work. A slight chance is not good enough. And so – NPC’s become . . . adventurers. Specifically, they assume the role of the four dead people.

Right, so. Who are these people? We’ve got Eric the human guard (and kinda really incompetent, the kind who probably would have been out of a job if he wasn’t the friend of the village mayor’s daughter). Naturally, since he has training in armor, and has armor, he’ll ‘pretend’ to be the paladin. Then we have Gabrielle – also a human. She’s the village mayor’s daughter. She spends her time alternating between being boredly tightly bound within the strictures of being ‘a proper lady’ and being a damsel in distress. She’s trained a lot to try to break out of needing people to save her, but it never seems to work. Naturally, since she’s the most educated of the bunch, she’ll pretend to be the wizard. Then there’s the gnome. Whose name escapes me at the moment. That annoys me. Oh right, his name is Thistle. Since he’s worked as a minion and darts around in shadows, he’ll naturally play the role of the Rogue. Lastly we have Grumph; he’s a half-orc and the bartender (and owner of the tavern). Naturally, because he is a half-orc, he’ll play the role of ‘Barbarian’.

Note 1: I got distracted numerous times, by accident, by the fact that Thristle’s god is named Grumble. And his best friend is named Grumph. Occasionally I’d forget which name went with which entity and got confused as to who Thristle was talking with.

The above, the NPC’s interacting with each other, was basically what I expected this book to be about. I knew that the four would end up pretending to be Adventurer’s because that’s in the description. What I didn’t know, though found out almost immediately, is that the book also includes the point of view of actual adventurers in addition to the NPC’s. I’m of two minds about the adventurer’s point of view – about whether it was needed or not. On the one hand – obviously, because of the structure of the book, something like their point of view was needed here and there. On the other hand, just maybe not as much of their story intermixed. Most of the book, though, involves the NPC’s, so I believe the adventurers part/pov was probably about right. Perhaps.

So then – this is one of those books that kind of sucked me in, tickled me, and then spit me out the other side. I rather enjoyed this book, I did. There’s some element that lifted it above where I thought the book would rest, while at the same time there’s some other unexplained element that’s keeping me from marking this down as a five star story. I did kind of love the book though. I’ll have to think harder about the rating. It should be noted, though, that I, once the first book was done, immediately purchased the second book. Recall, if you will, that I initially read this book because it was in the Kindle Unlimited program.

Right, well, um, I guess that’s all I have to say. I think.

February 17 2016