I recently read the third book in The Dark Profit Saga series of books. I was sure I wrote reviews of the first two, but apparently I didn’t. So here’s an aggregate one.
This series of books started out as a kind of comedic fantasy take on the Great Financial Crisis, with the book Orconomics.
The books stick to a standard cliché D&D fantasy world (orcs, goblins, halflings, nagas, gnolls etc) but inject our world’s financial system and society into it.
So, for example, quest runs are financed by investors in exchange for portions of the loot. This in turns means there is a market for stuff like dragon hoard futures, insurance, derivatives (CTO are “collateralized threat obligations“) etc etc.
The first book’s subtitle is “a satire” and it’s a pretty harsh one. The criticism of our economic reality is hard and transparent. The criticism of our society is just as bad: there’s a downtrodden population, the shadowkin, which can be killed and looted, unless they have special papers to be accepted into “proper” society… except those still won’t grant them proper standing (e.g. a subplot follows the murdering and looting of an innocent gnoll for a minor infraction and the lack of judicial consequences). Drug addiction, stereotyping, sexism, religion. Perhaps even too much stuff.
Overall, I found the first book quite funny, so I followed up with Son of a Liche and finally with Dragonfired. I think over time the author moved a bit from “easy” irony which you may appreciate or not
I would say the irony is rarely as clever as the best Terry Pratchett, but it matches the early Discworld stuff.
I find the D&D setting uninteresting, but the author turned it upside down enough that it becomes entertaining (such as the Orcs trying to integrate into lightling society by moving from raids and pillage to The Path of The Aggressive Seller).
The abundance of puns, especially in the first and second book, is just very entertaining for me, at least once I noticed it. Off the top of my head, with mapping in footnotes (so you can feel clever too!)
- Lamia Sisters §
- J.P. Gorgon §
- A Mr. Samel Fitch, author of a system to rate CTOs§
- A Mr. Stearns, who turns out to be a werebear§
A bunch more references can be noticed (if you pay attention) to games, movies and other things from our own world. Again, not as thick are deep as Terry Pratchett, but enough to cause you a giggle when you notice it.
The books also have genuinely good plots, and the author has a penchant for that trick of connecting sentences across scenes which I find delightful and very cinematographic.
I am not sure what the name of this thing is, but imagine something like the party opening some dungeon door and staring, one character goes “Oh Gods is that ..” then a quick cut to different people at the bar where one says “That’s a pile of bullshit“.
I looked up an example, tho it doesn’t make much sense without context
The bolt hit home before the thought did, punching into Oopa’s back with enough force to flip her over in midair.Something pink and bright flitted past her face as the messenger sprite flew above her, speeding off toward its destination.
Then she rolled in the air again and lost sight of her final message. Trailing blood, she plummeted toward the dark water below.
<chapter break>
The crimson olive dropped into the amber liquid with a faint plop.
Perhaps these are cheap writing tricks, but I like them.
One important mention: I listened to all these as audiobooks, and the narration by Doug Tisdale Jr. is excellent (if you enjoy narrators that do different voices for all the characters).
There’s a fourth book out, perhaps I’ll manage to post a single review for that one, meanwhile
Votes:
Orconomics: 7 quite funny and original, tho a bit cheap on irony.
Son of a Liche: 6.5 less slapstick but also inspired, perhaps.
Dragonfired: 7 less funny overall, but somehow feels like it has more heart.