Goblin Quest
(The Tales of Jig Dragonslayer, Book 1)
Jim C. Hines
DAW
Fiction, Fantasy
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: Scrawny, selfish, and craven, tunnel-dwelling goblins are so insignificant a race that not even one of the myriad gods of the realm bothers watching over them. They are picked on and preyed upon by their nastier hobgoblin cousins and by countless parties of treasure-seeking adventurers from the surface world. Any goblin who lives long enough to take a few humans down with them is considered a hero, but of course all heroes get killed just as dead as their less-brave kin, so what good is heroism in the end?
Nearsighted Jig is clever for a goblin, but even among his own people he's considered a cowardly runt. His only friend, Smudge, is his pet fire-spider, who ignites when panicked. When he gets bullied into guard duty, it's just his bad luck that he gets captured by a team of adventurers. The arrogant human prince Barius, his wizard brother Ryslind, their dwarf companion Darnak, and the young elfin thief Riana want to find the Rod of Creation, a legendary artifact of unimaginable power created long ago by a great wizard and hidden in the deepest and most dangerous of tunnels... beyond the lake of poisonous lizard-fish, just past the requisite Necromancer, and in the talons of a foul-tempered dragon, naturally. They force Jig to act as their guide, though he has even less of an idea of where to find the Rod than any of the bickering questors - not that they bother listening to him, of course, as it would be beneath them to listen to a lowly goblin. It isn't long before Jig's bad luck lands them all in trouble... though the biggest threat of all may turn out to be within their own party. Jig may never have wanted to live the life of a brave adventurer, but it looks like he has no choice - at least, not if he wants to survive long enough to go back to his old life as a cowardly runt.
REVIEW: Humorous fantasy books walk an even finer line than straight-up fantasies, for much the same reason that humorous movies walk a finer line than serious ones: you can't laugh at an unfunny joke. A bad serious story, you can roll your eyes at and mock, but a bad funny one deprives you of even that luxury - it just lies there, dead, on the screen or on the page. Thus, it was with some hesitation that I picked up Goblin Quest... but I thought I could use a change of pace, and it was on sale. (And a relative bought it, which always helps.) I was very pleasantly surprised. Goblins, often little more than a mild annoyance to adventurers or an easy level-up opportunity to gamers, get their due with Jig, the unlikely hero who nevertheless decides that traditional heroism is highly overrated, not to mention more than a little suicidal and occasionally outright stupid. During his adventures, he learns to see the weaknesses of his own kind, and while he does grow, he never fully embraces the ideals of the so-called superior races. The questors turn out to be more than cardboard cutout RPG-class characters, each in their own way at least as selfish as goblins in their willingness to sacrifice everything for their own personal gain. The humor isn't heavy-handed slapstick or low-brow body part jokes, playing off the cliches of the genre while still presenting a nice, unpredictable adventure. The ending wraps things up in a way I didn't expect, yet which felt eminently satisfying. I enjoyed reading this one much more than I'd expected; hopefully, I can track down the next book.
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