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A review by hidekisohma
Castle Perilous by John DeChancie
2.0
So I was recommended this book since i like portal fantasies. and let's just say...um... yeah this wasn't a good recommendation for me.
The premise is essentially people from other universes get teleported into this magical castle that has 100,000+ rooms in it. 2 humans and a snow beast get sucked in and wander around trying to find their way back all while seeing the wacky rooms.
See, this is what the book SHOULD be about. unfortunately it can't stay that simple and has to get incredibly convoluted.
The biggest issue with this book was there were WAY too many points of view. As I began to read this, i equated it to something similar of the "Myth" series by Robert Asprin. it was a shorter fantasy comedy series with wacky shenanigans. and by far and large, i LIKE the myth series. But myth did something this book didn't. It paced itself. I'm around book 11 of the myth series, and yes, there are like 10 main characters, but that's the thing. It's book 11. It started with 2 and gradually got more and more main characters added on so you weren't overwhelmed. It didn't do that here. It immediately jumped in with "NOPE! HERE'S 10 PEOPLE FIGURE IT OUT!" and it was SUPER overwhelming.
There are a lot of characters and they all have their different emotions, goals, and everything so yeah, jumping into the middle of a conversation with a guy you never met after just having 3 chapters of 3 different characters you never met before can get very confusing, very fast.
This book should have simply been about the 3 main characters learning about the castle. But that's apparently not enough as we had to add in this "Wizard lady is attacking the castle" storyline and something about a magical stone that's the brain of the castle and the owner of the castle handling the battle. And that's just the major storyline, let alone the smaller ones.
Another issue i had with this book was the juxtaposition of violence and comedy. it tries to play itself off as a whimsical fantasy, but then characters are getting violently murdered quite often. and it's not really given any sense of gravity, it's kind of just like "welp, that's a thing." There's a way of doing dark comedy, but this doesn't really feel like one. it just feels like a fantasy comedy that threw violence in there because they could.
We learn that everybody who stays in the castle gets a special power. the girl gets the ability to conjure stuff, snowbeast can teleport, and Gene gets.... super good sword fighting abilities i think? Still, a bit of a lame power for Gene who doesn't even know he has one until WAY late in the book.
There's i think 2 other main characters that show up sometimes but i honestly couldn't even remember their names. I think one was Kwip? They were thieves or something, i don't know. That's how much i cared.
*Spoiler warning*
For those of you who care, here's my spoiler warning.
You think, well, even though the book isn't great and it's confusing, at least you get the main characters having character development. NOPE! Once the big baddie is defeated, everyone gets sent back to the beginning and they all lose their memories. WAH WAH WAHHHHHHHHH. Yep...it's one of THOSE endings. So you don't even get to say "Well, at least i got some good character development." because it was deleted.
*End Spoiler warning*
All in all, this book was a major letdown. I really was looking forward to this one and hoped for something really fun, but in the end, i got something that was confusing, couldn't figure out what genre it wanted to be, and had WAYYY too many cooks and it spoiled the pot.
I found myself skimming a lot towards the end when the Gene crew wasn't doing stuff, but honestly, i didn't care about the rest. As i went on, i found myself caring less and less about the characters as they're honestly not good people. For example, at one point Linda (the human girl) randomly body shames the main villain. someone says about her "she's still beautiful-" and linda cuts in with "But skinny, and her bust is nothing to write home about" like...what? what does that have to do with ANYTHING? Snowbeast is basically a murderer, Linda is annoying, and Gene whines a lot. Yes, i get the idea that people who come to the castle are kinda F-ed up in the head. i get that. But like... it would be nice to have characters i actually want to be around.
It's really sad i couldn't enjoy this book. Because i really wanted to. It should not have taken me nearly a week to read a 250 page book. it really shouldn't have. but i kept dreading picking it back up. There were a few interesting tidbits here and there, but overall, i just couldn't find myself enjoying this.
2 out of 5.
The premise is essentially people from other universes get teleported into this magical castle that has 100,000+ rooms in it. 2 humans and a snow beast get sucked in and wander around trying to find their way back all while seeing the wacky rooms.
See, this is what the book SHOULD be about. unfortunately it can't stay that simple and has to get incredibly convoluted.
The biggest issue with this book was there were WAY too many points of view. As I began to read this, i equated it to something similar of the "Myth" series by Robert Asprin. it was a shorter fantasy comedy series with wacky shenanigans. and by far and large, i LIKE the myth series. But myth did something this book didn't. It paced itself. I'm around book 11 of the myth series, and yes, there are like 10 main characters, but that's the thing. It's book 11. It started with 2 and gradually got more and more main characters added on so you weren't overwhelmed. It didn't do that here. It immediately jumped in with "NOPE! HERE'S 10 PEOPLE FIGURE IT OUT!" and it was SUPER overwhelming.
There are a lot of characters and they all have their different emotions, goals, and everything so yeah, jumping into the middle of a conversation with a guy you never met after just having 3 chapters of 3 different characters you never met before can get very confusing, very fast.
This book should have simply been about the 3 main characters learning about the castle. But that's apparently not enough as we had to add in this "Wizard lady is attacking the castle" storyline and something about a magical stone that's the brain of the castle and the owner of the castle handling the battle. And that's just the major storyline, let alone the smaller ones.
Another issue i had with this book was the juxtaposition of violence and comedy. it tries to play itself off as a whimsical fantasy, but then characters are getting violently murdered quite often. and it's not really given any sense of gravity, it's kind of just like "welp, that's a thing." There's a way of doing dark comedy, but this doesn't really feel like one. it just feels like a fantasy comedy that threw violence in there because they could.
We learn that everybody who stays in the castle gets a special power. the girl gets the ability to conjure stuff, snowbeast can teleport, and Gene gets.... super good sword fighting abilities i think? Still, a bit of a lame power for Gene who doesn't even know he has one until WAY late in the book.
There's i think 2 other main characters that show up sometimes but i honestly couldn't even remember their names. I think one was Kwip? They were thieves or something, i don't know. That's how much i cared.
*Spoiler warning*
For those of you who care, here's my spoiler warning.
You think, well, even though the book isn't great and it's confusing, at least you get the main characters having character development. NOPE! Once the big baddie is defeated, everyone gets sent back to the beginning and they all lose their memories. WAH WAH WAHHHHHHHHH. Yep...it's one of THOSE endings. So you don't even get to say "Well, at least i got some good character development." because it was deleted.
*End Spoiler warning*
All in all, this book was a major letdown. I really was looking forward to this one and hoped for something really fun, but in the end, i got something that was confusing, couldn't figure out what genre it wanted to be, and had WAYYY too many cooks and it spoiled the pot.
I found myself skimming a lot towards the end when the Gene crew wasn't doing stuff, but honestly, i didn't care about the rest. As i went on, i found myself caring less and less about the characters as they're honestly not good people. For example, at one point Linda (the human girl) randomly body shames the main villain. someone says about her "she's still beautiful-" and linda cuts in with "But skinny, and her bust is nothing to write home about" like...what? what does that have to do with ANYTHING? Snowbeast is basically a murderer, Linda is annoying, and Gene whines a lot. Yes, i get the idea that people who come to the castle are kinda F-ed up in the head. i get that. But like... it would be nice to have characters i actually want to be around.
It's really sad i couldn't enjoy this book. Because i really wanted to. It should not have taken me nearly a week to read a 250 page book. it really shouldn't have. but i kept dreading picking it back up. There were a few interesting tidbits here and there, but overall, i just couldn't find myself enjoying this.
2 out of 5.