I had such high hope for Kill the Farm Boy by Kevin Hearne and Delilah S. Dawson. Hearne wrote the Iron Druid fantasy series and the recent A Plague of Giants (reviewed here) and this new novel is promoted as a “hilarious sendup of Chosen One narratives” full of “puns, flipped tropes”, cheese and a sassy goat. Sounds like it’s going to be super funny good, or else really really bad. Sadly it’s not good.
The novel starts out with a map full of strange place names – Retchedde, Sullenne, Muffincrumb and Gobbleneck – which got me interested right away. I love fantasy books that need maps. The map was the best part. The pixie with one blue sock shoots her arrow of Chosen-Oneness to our supposed hero, the Farm Boy. Farm Boy decides he needs to rescue the princess in her rose brier infested castle, and Gus, the talking goat, decides to come too. So far it’s a bit stupid, but OK.
The novel follows the traditional quest narrative, where the fearless band of strangers coalesces into a group of friends, all working together to, to, to what? Don’t know. A couple of the band go to the witch to find a cure for the now-dead Farm Boy, the evil wizard visits the witch to steal her magic, the goat just wants to avoid the curry pot and the hunts lady is going because why not.
Evil wizard can make bread; his hunts lady is a prime klutz; the bard looks more like a rabbit than a girl and the warrior maiden doesn’t much like wearing chain mail bikinis. These types of silly points need a light touch to make them funny and keep the book rolling along, but the authors keep beating the same points over and over. How many jokes about cold chain mail bikinis can you listen to? And how many times can you read about the talking goat and his pellets? Or the budding romance between warrior maiden and rabbit-maiden-bard? Or the incredibly clumsy and not real smart hunts lady?
The whole novel is like this. A couple of the merry band die and the rest just keep going; in fact after the first one dies from poison mislabeled there isn’t even a pause. He dies, they go. The problem is that if you are parodying a quest then there must be some actual quest elements.
Kill the Farm Boy was obnoxious with stupid innuendo and jokes that appeal to 13 year old boys. The parody didn’t work well because everything was a parody; the quest was no quest, the wizard is no wizard, the evil witch is not evil, the nastiness in the mines of Moiria (oh sorry, the Catacombs of Yore) is all illusion.
Kill the Farm Boy tries to be funny but it’s too pretentious and too asinine to make it work.
2 Stars
I received this for free in expectation of an honest review.
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