Kill the Farm Boy (2018)
Written by: Delilah S. Dawson and Kevin Hearne
Genre: Fantasy
Series: Tales of Pell
Length: 12 hours and 38 minutes (audio)
Narrator: Luke Daniels
Publisher: Del Ray / Random House Audio
Why I Chose It: Delilah S. Dawson is one of my favorite authors. If she’s written it, it’s an auto-buy for me. This one rose to the top of my to-be-read pile because of it’s punny nature and good-hearted poking fun at the Chosen One trope. I was looking for a good laugh and this book promised to deliver.
The premise:
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.
Spoilers Below
Discussion:
This book starts hard and fast with the puns and doesn’t let go of them for an instant. From the moment we meet Worstley (brother of poor, deceased Bestly) the tale is clear that this is not going to be your typical Chosen One narrative.
With a rotating cast of narrators, every chapter brings a new perspective and a new connection to the tale overall. It takes quite a few chapters before our team of “heroes” is fully completed and ready to go.
First we meet Worstley and his goat, Gustave. Worstley has been anointed a Chosen One by the pixie Staph, and Gustave has been blessed (cursed) with the gift of speech. The two set off for Worstley’s grand quest to rescue a maiden sleeping in a tower guarded by roses.
We don’t get much time to get attached to Worstley as shortly after his arrival to the tower he is cursed to death by Fia, the chainmail-bikini clad fighter who just wants to live in peace with some roses. Consumed by guilt at killing the poor boy, Fia insists on setting things right and Gustave tags along.
In the tower we meet Argabella, a bard cursed with bunny-like features, and then the quest moves onward to the dark lord, Toby. Toby, who can summon crackers with his magic, and his rogue assistant Poltro round out the party that is unsuccessfully off to revive Worstley.
They quest through dangerous ogres, hungry beasts and the party is finally completed when Worstley’s aunt, Grinda the sand witch joins the group. They set off to stop Staph the pixie from cursing any more people as Chosen Ones.
It’s a strange and winding adventure that pokes fun at most of the tropes of fantasy novels. It reminded me a lot of my own Dungeons and Dragons games with some of the ridiculous events, like Toby’s bread summoning saving the group from certain death in a cave filled with hungry monsters.
The humor is very hit or miss for me, and some of the sections seem to be a little stuck on riding the pun into the ground and then going for a few more miles. The elves of Morningwood particularly hit that for me and I just wanted the chapter to end so that the jokes would end in that chapter. A few sections of jokes about boogers and gross-out humor actually caused me to skip a chapter completely because the descriptions made me gag more than giggle.
Many of the twists on the genre did take me off guard. The amount of death was particularly a moment of ‘wait what?’ for me. Way more characters died than I anticipated and it threw me off my enjoyment a bit because I’d hopped into this book wanting lighthearted giggles and instead some heavy moments land a few solid blows in this novel.
In Conclusion: The book is a fun ride that skewers old tropes and delivers some good jokes and laughs. If you’re going in for only a funny ride, be warned there are a lot of bumps and deaths towards the end. The humor tends towards bawdy, punny, or potty-humor so if those are not your cup of tea, you’re probably not going to enjoy the ride here. The book does offer a new look at a beloved genre. Kudos to Luke Daniels, the narrator, who gives each character an incredible voice. I’ll be curious to check out the next book in the series, No Country for Old Gnomes which will be out on April 16, 2019.
Agreed. I got to a death involving some poison and was already getting bored before then. After that I kind of decided, “Eh, I’m done,” and skimmed the rest of the book since it seemed like nothing that was happening had any true significance on, well, anything. Got to the end, read maybe the last 20 pages and called it good. I can see a lot of people liking the whole thing, but for me it started to get boring and unfunny the way Guardians of the Galaxy (both of them) did. Like, “Yeah, ok, I get it, this is funny and we’re making jokes and the goat crapped on the floor for the bazillionth time, can we move on please and be serious for maybe 2 seconds?” And honestly since so much of it was silly/wacky that when serious moments did appear, they didn’t feel serious at all and I was never worried for anyone. When people did die, I just thought, “Oh. Well, that’s unfortunate,” and moved on.
Ah well. Can’t like everything I guess. Still, both authors are among my favorites when it comes to Twitter hilarity. And Delilah’s dog poems are just the BEST. xD