Kill the Farm Boy, by Kevine Hearne and Delilah S. Dawson,
Del Rey
These days I’m on a Kevin Hearne reading spree (see my
reviews of A Plague of Giants and The Squirrel on the Train) so I dove
into Kill the Farm Boy, discovering
to my delight that Hearne’s co-author, Delilah S. Dawson, is none other than
another of my recent favorites, as Lila Bowen author of the excellent “The
Shadow” series. Delight rapidly gave way to hilarity as this story unfolded,
tackling one fantasy trope after another, turning them on their heads and
planting petunias between their toes.
The titular farm boy is Worstley, younger brother of
Bestley, who had been stabbed in the heart by Lord Ergot (if you don’t know
what ergot is, pause now and look it up) for being too handsome. When a
malicious pixie named Staph (aureus?) casts a spell to change Worstley into the
Chosen One (and gives Gustave the goat the ability to speak, which he does in
smart-ass style), it does not set well with The Dark Lord Toby (whose most
powerful spell causes baked goods to rain from the sky). Opposing The Dark Lord
Toby’s nefarious, yeastly plans are Fia, a 7-foot tall barbarian warrior, and
her sweetheart, Argabella, a woman enchanted to be a half-rabbit, who
incidentally is the world’s worst bard:
She … sang an improvised song of obfuscation:
We are not food
No sir Mister Monster
We taste super bad
Oh gods we are not food
Really really really
You gotta believe me
It’s hard to beat that.
The silliness isn’t restricted to spooks of characters from
pose, verse, and film (although familiarity with J. R. R. Tolkien, Lewis
Carroll, The Princess Bride, The Wizard
of Oz, Grimm’s fairytales, Conan the Barbarian, and Norse mythology, to
name a few, enhances the humor).
I found that I couldn’t read too many chapters at a sitting,
but the play of tropes, not to mention the puns, kept me coming back for
another fun visit to the Lands of Pell.
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