Kill the Farm Boy by Delilah S. Dawson & Kevin Hearne

**We picked up an ARC of this at BookCon 2018 and we’d like to thank Delilah, Kevin, and Del Ray for the opportunity to review. This book comes out on July 24th and you can get it here.**

What I drank prior:
Little bit of wine, little bit of beer.  Mostly I’m just in a really good mood.  Happy somewhere around the 4th of July everybody.  This post is brought to you by not-having-to-work-tomorrow.

Spoiler-free Overview:

Hmm.  Let’s start with that I received this book at BookCon2018 for free and I’m giving it a free an honest review.  I picked up the book because I follow Delilah Dawson on twitter and she is an absolute delight!  So I wanted the thing…

The book is a satire that follows Worstley, a boy who works on a farm who has been told he is the chosen one.  He travels with a talking goat, Gustave, until things happen.  At which point Gustave travels with Fia (a busty warrior who wants to be a gardener) Argabella (a half-bunny lady) Grinda (a sand-witch) Toby ( a dark lord) and Poltro (Toby’s at-hand person).  They, as all good characters in fantasty novels do, go on a quest.

Spoiler-free Thoughts:  This book can be a little bit uneven.  At times it reads like Terry Pratchett (which is a very high honor for me to bestow upon any novel) but it also has a tendency to devolve into immaturity, and can revel in the immaturity.  To be honest, I think there is a chance that means I just wasn’t the target audience for this.  I can be a bit picky where my satire is concerned.  Basically the book had some strong moments and some weak moments.

Characters:  It’s a satirical novel.  Some of the characters are charicatures, some are not.  Unfortunately there are more caricatures that mold-breaking characters.  I felt like the cast was probably a little bit overly large for proper focus to be given to everyone.  Fia was probably the most mold-breaking as the fighter in the skimpy bikini that doesn’t want to fight but has been forced into it, she was also the person I most enjoyed reading about.  I enjoyed Poltro’s point of view as she wasn’t particularly smart which makes for some very fun reading.  I enjoyed the talking goat, although his schtick could get a little tiresome.  The rest of the cast could have been condensed a little bit.  This wasn’t exactly a book where character growth was particularly important for most of the characters.

Plot: This book follows a fairly typical J.R.R. Tolkein scheme where the adventuring party pulls together and then makes their way through a variety of strange circumstances before finally meeting their goal.  Each different section had a very different feel, but this is where a bit of my disappointment came in.  The different sections had high highs or low lows.  I really enjoyed most of what popped up in a cave, but found a meeting with the elves to be overly long.

Writing Style: I know I’ve said this a bunch of times, but it’s a satire.  At times it reads as if it’s supposed to be serious while absurd things are happening.  At other times it reads as juvenile and absurd.  I tend to prefer the serious writing while absurd things happen, the humor can be crude but it feels a bit less like teenagers making dick jokes than the juvenile writing and absurd happen-stances.

Overall Review:  It boils down to, there was some disjointed nature to this book, the writing style varied greatly from section to section, and the characters were mismatched in the effort of balancing them.  I love the idea behind it, and I enjoy playing with tropes.  This book has some gems to it, some parts that are absolutely amazing, but needs a bit of finessing to make it flow a little bit smoother.

I did have an arc copy so many it does get smoothed out?

What to pair it with: Amaretto Sour – this book doesnt’ take itself super seriously and deserves a drink that does the same.  Basically candy, this book was a fun read even if I had some issues with parts of it.

Rating: 3.5/5 Shots

Feel free to tell me your thoughts.

Also follow Delilah Dawson on Twitter.  I always enjoy when she pops up on my feed.

(Editor’s Note: Kevin Hearne is also hysterical on Twitter)

Ginny