NPCs - Drew Hayes

(2014) 

Genre: Fantasy
Synopsis: They keep the world running, the food cooked, and the horses shoed, yet what adventurer has ever spared a thought or concern for the Non-Player Characters? In the town of Maplebark, four such NPCs settle in for a night of actively ignoring the adventurers drinking in the tavern when things go quickly and fatally awry. Once the dust settles, these four find themselves faced with an impossible choice: pretend to be adventurers undertaking a task of near-certain death or see their town and loved ones destroyed.

*** 

Review: This novel started out really well, catching my interest with nerdy humor and clever gaming trope references. Unfortunately, a couple of things ultimately let it down and averaged out my opinion of it to 'enjoyable but unpolished'.

The premise that the imaginary worlds of tabletop gamers is actually real and tethered to our world via said gamers is really fun - even more so because the author chose to make heroes of the usually-overlooked NPCs of the gaming world. Although somewhat predictable in places - such as switching up gaming archetypes after finding the assumed defaults simply weren't working for our makeshift heroes, the result is a team of characters who actually feel quite fleshed out and really likeable.

I wasn't so keen on the real-world gamers (apart from Russel and Tim), because they were kind of a bunch of killjoys. I was personally glad they didn't show up in the book too often, and I absolutely loved how things turned out for them - especially Tim - but the pacing of the switch between NPCs and gamers was a bit off. On the note of pacing - the action sequences were way too long. Way. Too. Long.

The writing grated a little bit. Unpolished is the only world I have for it - it's not bad, just not refined enough to flow smoothly. All the same, it was pretty easy to read and I was definitely interested enough in the characters to want to find out how things turned out for them. The ending was, again, unpolished, and a bit too convoluted. I sound very harsh in this review, and that's not intentional. It's funny, nerdy, easy going and enjoyable - just felt somewhat lacking. I would however happily read a follow-on novel - there's certainly room for one.

Rating: 3/5