The evil wizard Jerado traps King Bohan in a cave. A sleep spell enables the King to survive and when he finally gets free, he discovers the wizard is still alive and ruling the country. Determined to get revenge, Bohan starts a long journey to find Jerado. Along the way, Bohan survives obstacles and is appalled at the living conditions of folks as a result of the cruel laws enacted by Jerado and … and his family,
Fantasy humor doesn’t get better than this.
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Quense is a prolific author, mostly in the fantasy and sci fi genre. His style feels like a nod toward Douglas Adams, which he cites as inspiration (so it fits). The story itself is really just a backdrop for the same kind of adventure (relatively unextraordinary hero thrown into an extraordinary circumstance) with a ton of humor and chuckle-worthy jokes tossed in fray.
This book is a fantasy, and feels almost like an RPG. Quense is great at immersing you right in his world and drawing you close to the characters. I do feel the characters could be beefed up a bit, but overall it wasn’t bad and it was a pretty quick-paced read. I think there’s a lot of elements to this novel that fall out of the fantasy genre, which is part of what makes it great. It’s got some elements that are typically in other genres, and it doesn’t break the world. Quense is a master at world building and redefining the typical fantasy story.
If you love Hitchhiker’s Guide you’ll love this book. It’s a great homage, intentional or otherwise.
New Jersey writer Hank Quense is the author of 50 published short stories along with six novels, and three collections of stories. In the non-fiction area, he has over a dozen articles published on fiction writing and is the author of the Fiction Writing Guides series and the Self-publishing Guides series. Both series consist of a number of eBooks. The Fiction Writing Guides and the Self-Publishing Guides are an outgrowth of his lectures on fiction writing, self-publishing and book marketing.
Quense has a sense of humor well modulated with a keen sense of the classics and the result of this shotgun marriage results in some of the funniest sci-fi fantasy novels before the public today. It takes a fine writer to incorporate well-known figures, from life, literature or from the stage (another form of life!) and create a story that has a presence all its own. Quense satisfies on all levels: he creates places (like Gundarland – ‘an unusual planet. Populated by numerous races such as humans, dwarfs, elves, halflings, trolls and yuks, racial tensions ran high in the more conservative areas’) and makes them into intricately important yet funny tales
This is Book 4 of his Gundarland Stories and the author’s keen wit enables him to create characters that are both clever and imaginative, obvious as the opening to this novel reveals: ‘Jerado, King of Gant, entered his throne room and surveyed the officers assembled there. The five generals with a few staff officers representing each kingdom he had conquered. They sat at a table facing the throne. Jerado was a dwelf, a detested combination of an elf mother and a dwarf father. He inherited all the bad qualities of both races and none of the good ones. He was shorter than most elves but taller than all dwarfs. He was stockier that the elves but thinner than most dwarfs. Jerado had reddish-bland hair and a scraggly beard and brown eyes. He was forty–five and had been forty-five for the lat six years thanks to an anti-aging spell he used monthly.’
A brief overview of the plot is inviting – ‘The evil wizard Jerado traps King Bohan in a cave. A sleep spell enables the King to survive and when he finally gets free, he discovers the wizard is still alive and ruling the country. Determined to get revenge, Bohan starts a long journey to find Jerado. Along the way, Bohan survives obstacles and is appalled at the living conditions of folks as a result of the cruel laws enacted by Jerado and his family.’
Quense owns a large share of the trademark on fantasy novels, and in this series he embraces time travel, revenge, an eye on political/government corruption and more in creating a memorable escape to another time and place. For a terrific escape to ‘elsewhere,’ dive in! Recommended.