![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Title: The Warslayer
Author: Rosemary Edgehill
Genre: World-walking fantasy
Thingummies: 3.5
Synopsis: The star of a Xena-type show gets transported to an actual fantasy world.
Thoughts: At this point, there's a long tradition of "Earth person with an esoteric career gets magically transported to a fantasy realm requiring exactly their skills". Fortunately, this is a reasonably good example of the genre. Glory is sufficiently genre-aware to sidestep a lot of the more tedious bits (later in the book, a reference is even made to GalaxyQuest). Even better, the folks who brought her over are actually aware that she's an actress, not a demon slayer--they're just desperate enough to give it a try anyway. And it turns out there's a very good reason why those folks are so helpless on their own that even an Olympic gymnast-turned-mediocre actress might be a better hero than anything their own people can offer. So we can comfortably sit back and enjoy the culture clash without wanting to shake anyone for being too stupid.
And it's a fun little romp, if a little disjointed. The stakes are suitably high, some of the minor characters are appealing, and the origin of the villain turns out to be fairly chilling. Some bits make less sense, though--the other peoples of the world seem to exist only when it's plot-convenient for them to do so. Same goes for evil critters. It's also pretty unclear how much events are or are not being manipulated by gods/fate--it seems to change a bit, again depending on what the plot demands.
The most irritating bit, though, is Glory's encounter with the Oracle. A manipulative all-powerful being appears abruptly out of nowhere, and (minor spoilers, but deserved) never appears again. It's as if the author couldn't figure out how to get Glory properly invested in the plot, threw in a deus ex machina in the middle to scare her straight, and then got to the end with this unresolved and say "eh, whatever". Really, there was no reason to put Earth in jeopardy at all, since there's no follow through.
On the other hand, there's a hilarious appendix with capsule reviews of all of the first season of Glory's camptastic show. Which may be worth reading all by itself.
Author: Rosemary Edgehill
Genre: World-walking fantasy
Thingummies: 3.5
Synopsis: The star of a Xena-type show gets transported to an actual fantasy world.
Thoughts: At this point, there's a long tradition of "Earth person with an esoteric career gets magically transported to a fantasy realm requiring exactly their skills". Fortunately, this is a reasonably good example of the genre. Glory is sufficiently genre-aware to sidestep a lot of the more tedious bits (later in the book, a reference is even made to GalaxyQuest). Even better, the folks who brought her over are actually aware that she's an actress, not a demon slayer--they're just desperate enough to give it a try anyway. And it turns out there's a very good reason why those folks are so helpless on their own that even an Olympic gymnast-turned-mediocre actress might be a better hero than anything their own people can offer. So we can comfortably sit back and enjoy the culture clash without wanting to shake anyone for being too stupid.
And it's a fun little romp, if a little disjointed. The stakes are suitably high, some of the minor characters are appealing, and the origin of the villain turns out to be fairly chilling. Some bits make less sense, though--the other peoples of the world seem to exist only when it's plot-convenient for them to do so. Same goes for evil critters. It's also pretty unclear how much events are or are not being manipulated by gods/fate--it seems to change a bit, again depending on what the plot demands.
The most irritating bit, though, is Glory's encounter with the Oracle. A manipulative all-powerful being appears abruptly out of nowhere, and (minor spoilers, but deserved) never appears again. It's as if the author couldn't figure out how to get Glory properly invested in the plot, threw in a deus ex machina in the middle to scare her straight, and then got to the end with this unresolved and say "eh, whatever". Really, there was no reason to put Earth in jeopardy at all, since there's no follow through.
On the other hand, there's a hilarious appendix with capsule reviews of all of the first season of Glory's camptastic show. Which may be worth reading all by itself.
