If a human was made up of the experiences of their life, was Gav anything at all?
Dreadful by Caitlin Rozakis
LENGTH: 352 pages
GENRES: Fantasy, Fiction
PUBLISHER: Titan Books
RELEASE DATE: 28 May 2024
BOOK DESCRIPTION:
A sharp-witted, debut high fantasy farce featuring killer moat squid, toxic masculinity, evil wizards and a garlic festival – all at once. Perfect for fans of T. Kingfisher, K. J. Parker and Travis Baldree.
It’s bad enough waking up in a half-destroyed evil wizard’s workshop with no eyebrows, no memories, and no idea how long you have before the Dread Lord Whomever shows up to murder you horribly and then turn your skull into a goblet or something.
It’s a lot worse when you realize that Dread Lord Whomever is… you.
Gav isn’t really sure how he ended up with a castle full of goblins, or why he has a princess locked in a cell. All he can do is play along with his own evil plan in hopes of getting his memories back before he gets himself killed.
But as he realizes that nothing – from the incredibly tasteless cloak adorned with flames to the aforementioned princess – is quite what it seems, Gav must face up to all the things the Dread Lord Gavrax has done. And he’ll have to answer the hardest question of all – who does he want to be?
A high fantasy farce featuring killer moat squid, toxic masculinity, an evil wizard convocation, and a garlic festival. All at once. All in all, Dread Lord Gavrax has had better weeks.
My Review
He woke up with no eyebrows and no idea how he’d gotten into such a position.
I was really looking forward to Dreadful. And I didn’t dislike it, but it didn’t end up being as much of a gem as I’d hoped it would be. Like, I still really liked certain parts of it, but on the whole I just felt very meh about it.
The concept of this novel was something I found extremely interesting and was all it took for me to hype myself up for it. But, I dunno, I just felt like it was a bit bland for me. I’ve heard it compared to Legends & Lattes, because they’re both kind of slow-burns, and I agree with that. I think that that might be part of the reason that Dreadful didn’t gel with me as much as I’d hoped.
First off: the stuff I liked. I really enjoyed the characters; I feel that they were the strongest part of the book. Gav was both amusing and interesting to me because I’m a sucker for amnesia plots (if they’re done right), and the circumstances and framing of the novel made the whole thing funny to me. Eliasha was also a brilliant inversion of the princess archetype. I loved her personality and how she wasn’t conventionally attractive and that her interests weren’t conventional either. Gav and Eliasha also had great platonic banter, and their friendship was fun to follow. I also really liked the side characters, like the goblins and the villagers. The garlic festival was hilarious!
The plot was okay. It wasn’t anything super unique, as it’s purposely riffing on fantasy tropes, and is inspired by one of Rozakis’ husband’s D&D campaigns from a few years ago. I like it when books get a bit meta sometimes though, or are self aware, so a lot of it was fun.
I did find stuff to be kind of predictable, however, but that’s not always a bad thing. It did make a couple of parts kind of boring though, and the climax was not very exciting (for me) to read. The book also got a bit too self aware and preachy at some points.
The writing was mostly okay. I thought that the dialogue and point of view came across pretty naturally. I did find some of the descriptions to be overused and annoying, though. The amount of times the author used stuff like “the saturnine face” made me want to throw my tablet across the couch. It really irritated me.
But yeah, overall this was a pretty okay book and a decent debut. It may not have been my cup of tea exactly, but I think that lots of other people will enjoy it. Especially if you like more slow paced and light-hearted stuff.
A Few Quotes I Liked
So, this was shock. It seemed terribly inconvenient that the brain’s reaction to being placed in mortal jeopardy was to become much stupider.
“Do you want to get fireballed by mistake?”
She shrugged fatalistically. “Will get fireballed eventually.”
If he hurried out, it was because he had very important research to do. It was not a retreat.
“Your good sense. Your common sense can inspire me to another way of life. To goodness.”
“You could start with letting me go.”
“Something smaller.”
“How about not being a complete asshole to everyone you meet?” she said acidly.
As always, thanks so much to everyone for reading, and I hope you have a not-dreadful day/night!
See ya ~Mar