2013; 310 pages. Book 1 (out of 2) in “The
Adventurers” series. New Author?
: Yes. Genres: Fantasy; YA. Overall Rating: 7½*/10.
It’s just been announced: the Kingdom of
Bolognia will be holding an Adventure Tournament! Everyone in the kingdom is so excited! All the famous adventurers are sure to be
there!
Of course, no one’s exactly
sure what the adventure, or adventures, will be, but that’s in the able hands
of Lord Sophar, head of the EAS, which is short for Epical Adventuring Society. No doubt, the assigned quests will be utterly exciting!
The king himself, Calder VII,
will be presiding over the opening ceremonies! He has a vested interest in the making the tournament a smashing success, since all those entry fees
are expected to build up an embarrassingly depleted Royal Treasury.
I sure hope Sir Gorgomar is
entering the contest. He’s the foremost
adventurer in the land and any team with him on it would be the heavy favorite
to win it all. But we need lots of
students from Foeny University (if you don’t
like FU, well, FU!) to enter as well.
They don’t stand a chance of
winning, but their amateur attempts to win will make the professional adventurers look real
good.
What’s To Like...
Entrants sign up for The
Adventure Tournament individually and get placed on teams that are put
together through the whims of the tournament officials. We follow the efforts of Remilius “Remy”
Fairwyn as he learns how to work with others and develop some adventuring qualities. It is a slow process.
Remy has the makings of a fine anti-hero. He’s a 22-year-old university student with
mediocre-to-poor grades, and not motivated at all to improve himself scholastically. His
father is a professor at Foeny U, and is against Remy’s entering the tournament
since logically it will cut into his son's study time. Remy enters anyway, partly because
adventuring sounds better than studying, and partly just to spite his dad.
I’d label this book a “Lighthearted Fantasy”. There is a magic system in it, but it doesn’t
overwhelm the adventure storyline. Remy
wisely buys himself a couple pieces of magical equipment, including a club, which he dubs “Smacker”, and some “Boots of
Flight”. In the early going. they turn out to be more of a hindrance than a help. A wide variety of magical critters show
up, including vampires, dwarves, elves, wyverns, giants, and my favorites, the
dreadfully cute "kitty-lizards".
There’s plenty of action,
which is what you want from a book titled The Adventure Tournament, but
Nicholas Andrews also weaves some humorous bits into the tale, such as the
background to the team’s name, “The Bowels”,
and the “Elvis Affairs”. Subplots include a coming-of-age romance and
Remy’s tense relationship with his father, but they mesh nicely with the main questing storyline. I loved the
nod to The Princess Bride enough to include it as an
excerpt below.
Things progress in an easily anticipated manner for a while. You
know Remy and his teammates are going to somehow beat the long odds in the preliminary rounds because, well, why else
would we be following them? But when the championship round approaches, Nicholas Andrews adds a number of clever
plot twists that I wasn't expecting. And in the end, the winner is…
Well, we’ll let you read the
book to find out.
Kewlest New Word ...
Geas (n.): an obligation or prohibition
imposed magically on someone. (an Irishism)
Others: Favrile glass (n.).
Ratings…
Amazon:
4.2/5
based on 19 ratings and 19 reviews.
Goodreads: 3.45/5 based on 40
ratings and 8 reviews
Things That Sound Dirty But Aren’t…
“Stop
fingering your wax-hole and pay attention!” (loc. 1172)
Excerpts...
Edgen had always felt sort of sorry for
King Calder. He was the latest in a long
line of great King Calders, each one having achieved a great deed during their
reigns. His Majesty’s father, Calder VI,
had managed to cement the rights of dwarves within the kingdom. No longer will dwarves be considered
half-a-man, or men be considered too-much-a-dwarf, but all races shall share
the bounties of this kingdom in equality, went his famous saying. (loc. 53)
Since the invention of the kiss there have
been five kisses that were rated the most passionate, the most pure. It had been so long since Remy kissed a girl,
this one didn’t even come close.
He released her and gave an apologetic
grin. Kyra looked behind Remy and saw
the rest of Team Bowel coming over to them.
“We can work on it later,” she told him. (loc. 3611)
Kindle Details…
The
Adventure Tournament presently costs $3.99 at Amazon. The sequel, Babyface
Fire, is the same price. Nicholas
Andrews has three other e-books to offer, they range in price from $0.99
to $4.99.
“Remy, duck!” “Where?”
(loc. 3244)
There are a couple quibbles,
but nothing major.
There was some cussing – I
counted 12 instances in the first 25% of the book – but I wouldn’t call it
excessive. There was also one “adult
situation”, of the hormonal ilk, but it was tastefully and humorously done.
These things might cause an
eight-year-old to ask embarrassing questions, but Amazon lists the target
audience as 13-18 years, meaning junior and
senior high schoolers, and they’ll be amused, not confused, about them.
Similarly, the writing style
felt a bit simplistic to me, but I’m not the target audience and YA readers won’t
care because the pacing is brisk, the action is non-stop, and the storyline is
engaging.
The biggest issue is the
editing. There are lots of punctuation
errors, especially ones involving commas in direct dialogue (or lack
thereof) and hyphens in compound words (or lack thereof). There were also a fair amount of “spellchecker errors”,
such as discretely/discreetly, towed/toed,
reign/rein, lead/led, and chain
mail/chainmail.
But I quibble. My expectations from The Adventure Tournament were modest since it is written for a YA readership, and it held my interest much better than I thought it would, particularly in the
second half when those plot twists started popping up.
7½ Stars. Judging from his offerings at Amazon, it looks like Nicholas Andrews has retired from writing. The last two of his books there were published in June, 2017. Here’s hoping he unretires at some point in the future. We need more lighthearted fantasy novels.
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