Most helpful customer reviews
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Book one of the masterful The Reluctant King trilogy, Jun 18 2006
L. Sprague de Camp is a master storyteller, and I quickly found myself immersed in this vivid account of Jorian's adventures. As the tale begins, Jorian is at the end of his reign as the king of Xylar. Each king of that realm serves only five years; then he is beheaded and his head tossed into the crowd. Whoever catches the head, as a wandering Jorian had accidentally done five years earlier, becomes the new king. For obvious reasons, Jorian had developed quite an attachment to his head and wanted to keep it. With the help of the old wizard Karadur, split-second timing, and good old-fashioned luck, Jorian escapes his fate. He then embarks on a quest to seize the Kist of Avlen as recompense for Karamur's aid (and to win his freedom from the geas placed upon him as part of the escape bargain). Karamur serves a faction of the region's magical conclave dedicated to dispensing knowledge and use of magic to everyone, and the secrets held in the Kist are deemed crucial to the achievement of this goal.
Jorian's travels and adventures are thrilling, both with and without Karadur at his side. He encounters terrible luck, betrayal, and great danger everywhere he goes, but he manages to press on with his tasks somehow. Wanting no more than to settle down with the chosen wife he left behind in Xylar and work as a common craftsman, he is cut out to be either an adventurer or a king. His greatest skill is actually his storytelling ability, and many of his escapes come about as a direct result of his storytelling prowess. Many of the stories he tells are even more engaging than the story of his current adventures, I must say. Jorian's world is a fascinating place, filled with untrustworthy magicians, numerous gods of all kinds, dangerous ape-men, lustful, dangerous women, and all manner of dangers. The forms of government of the realms he passes through are fascinating-one land all but forbids contact between men and women, one is ruled by a power-hungry theocracy; one relies on highly complicated yet ultra-important protocols for interacting with men of all kinds of rank. The arguments he hears as to why one government is better than others are often comical yet have unmistakable relevance to worldly matters here on planet Earth.
The Goblin Tower is the first of three books, collectively known as The Reluctant King trilogy, detailing the travels and experiences of Jorian and Karadur. These are fascinating characters experiencing fascinating things. One can only shake one's head in wonder sometimes at our reluctant heroes' ability to escape one mess only to fall into another one forthwith, but these adventures are thrilling enough to keep the reader fully immersed in this fantasy world of de Camp's creation. L. Sprague de Camp is a legendary fantasy writer, and The Goblin Tower affords the reader a wonderful opportunity to introduce himself to the works of this master craftsman of the genre.
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