2021; 353 pages. Book 4 (out of 4) in the “Last Dragonslayer” series. New Author? : No. Genre : Fantasy; YA. Overall Rating : 8*/10.
The Trolls are coming! The Trolls are coming!!
And the entire population of
the UnUnited Kingdom is quaking in their boots.
Well, everyone that’s still alive, anyway. Trolls find humans to be a culinary
delight. There are so many good ways to
cook them and eat them.
The Trolls have advanced to
the border of the Kingdom of Snodd, but they’ve been stymied there, thanks to
the Button Trench. Trolls despise
buttons. No one knows why, but the Button Trench is keeping them out of Snodd.
For now.
Jennifer Strange has been put
in charge of organizing Snodd’s defenses for if and when the Button Trench fails. Things could be worse. Snodd has called up hundreds of fencers,
marksmen, and warriors to aid in her cause.
There’s just one problem.
There seems to have been a
bit of a communications mishap when recruiting those soldiers.
What’s To Like...
The Great Troll
War is the fourth and concluding book in Jasper Fforde’s “The Last Dragonslayer” fantasy series. There’s a 7-year gap (2014-2021) between publication of the previous
book in the series, The Eye of Zoltar, and
this one. The story is told in the
first-person POV, Jennifer’s.
As always, Jasper Fforde
combines masterful storytelling with lots of wit. How *do* you repel a horde of Trolls who have
the advantage in size, power and most importantly, wizardry? Meanwhile, Jennifer has to contend with
princesses behaving badly, games of Thrones, and the realization that her magic
is puny compared to the evil mastermind directing the Troll invasion, "The Mighty Shandar".
The book is written in
English, not American, which features weird spellings including centred,
despatch, storeys, dykes, pyjamas, and manoeuvring. Jeez, spellchecker hated that sentence. There are some witty acronyms, such as HENRY,
which stands for Hex Energy Neutralising
Reversal Yieldiser, and even a brief moment where
Jasper Fforde personally breaks down the fourth wall.
I liked the nods to Pachelbel and the movie Back To The Future, and
enjoyed the ride on the Cloud Leviathan.
The ending is a stutter-step
affair. After the titular Troll War issue is resolved, the storyline
segues into a final showdown theme,
pitting Jennifer and The Mighty Shandar. Fortuitously, this allows Fforde to tie up several plot
threads. Things close on a
sad-yet-hopeful, unexpected-yet-hinted-at, dark note. It wraps up the series succinctly, yet
leaves the door open for a sequel.
However, I have a feeling this series is done for good.
Ratings…
Amazon:
4.5/5
based on 976 ratings and 45 reviews.
Goodreads: 4.17/5 based on 1,570
ratings and 212 reviews.
Excerpts...
“Numerical values are seriously
overrated. Here’s another example. If I were to tell you the mass of the sun is
roughly 2 x 1030 kilograms then it would just be a meaninglessly
high number – ten with thirty noughts after it.”
“I agree with that,” said the Princess.
“Right,” said the Troll. “But if I were to tell you the sun has 99.86
per cent of the combined mass of the entire solar system, what would that
mean?”
“It would mean . . . wow,” said the
Princess.
“Exactly,” said the Troll, grinning
broadly. “Wow.” (loc. 1344)
“I’ve only got a few things to say, and I
shall be brief. Firstly, I am to wield absolute
power in all the Kingdoms, and anyone who has not signed the book of allegiance
in the foyer will be considered an enemy of the Crown. But, to show my caring nature, they shall not
be executed, but banished: thrown forcibly across the Button Trench in the
direction of the Trolls after being painted with gravy.” (loc. 2069)
Kindle Details…
The
Great Troll War presently sells for $2.99 at Amazon. The other 3 books in the series range in
price from $6.07 to $9.99. Jasper Fforde offers about 16 other e-novels, in the form of several other series, and costing anywhere from $2.99
to $14.99.
“There are always a
few naysayers who want to rain on your parade when you contemplate galactic
domination.” (loc.
3239)
The target audience is
YA, so The Great Troll War is virtually
profanity-free; I noted just one “damn”
and three “hells” in the entire
book. I don’t recall any adult
situations. The editing is superb; the
only typo I saw was a variant spelling of Princess Jocamanica’s name:
“Jocaminca”, and I’m not even sure if that wasn't just a deliberate snubbing of
her.
The seven-year hiatus between
Books 3 and 4 means a lot of readers, including me, remembered little about
recurring characters and overarching storylines. The author cleverly addresses this by
back-referencing past events and beings from earlier books via footnotes, but
some reviewers thought this was overdone.
Personally, I found that I could follow the storyline easily even when bypassing the footnotes.
Overall, I felt that Jasper Fforde’s ultimate aim in writing The Great Troll War was to bring closure to this series, and in this regard he succeeded nicely. I wasn’t blown away by the way it ended, yet the story kept me entertained throughout. There is a rumor afoot that a series-ending eighth book in Fforde’s fabulous Thursday Next series, Dark Reading Matter, will be coming out in June 2025, and I’m looking forward to finding out how he pulls that one off.
8 Stars. One last thing. Two catchy little sidelights in The Great Troll War are the “20:1 Quickener Spell” and the “El Carisma pout”. I simply have to figure out some way to learn both of these talents.
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