Book #45

Goblin Quest
by Jim C. Hines

I finally got a hold of Goblin Quest, the first book in a new trilogy that looks like good comic fantasy: they're about a goblin named Jig who becomes an unlikely and unwilling hero, helping human adventurers in a quest despite a goblin's natural cowardice and untrustworthiness. I saw Book 2 at Fred Meyer several months ago, maybe even last year, and then Book 3 more recently -- but I hadn't seen Book 1, and this seemed a series that needed to go in order, even apart from my own obsession with doing that. But I found it at Powell's on our last trip, which worked out wonderfully well for me since I not only found a half-dozen books I've been keeping my eye out for, but I also found out that my thank-you gift card from one of my favorite students was actually worth $100. Woot! Free books, and plenty of 'em.

Anyway, Goblin Quest was fun comic fantasy; Jig is hilarious as a narrative voice, because he just can't understand the humans and the way they act, and he is constantly comparing their reactions to what a goblin would do in the same situation -- which is generally run away, or stab someone in the back, or both. It was also a lot of fun for me because, although the book doesn't rely on Dungeons and Dragons for its setting and its monsters -- which is really annoying when it is done badly, when a writer describes a dragon as a Red dragon, the biggest and meanest type, much worse than Blue or White dragons, but doesn't offer any more explanation than that, simply assuming that anyone reading the book has played D&D and thinks of dragons in those terms -- this one does have a lot of parallels to the D&D world, but it has a much better set of descriptions and explanations. For instance: the goblins are weaker than the hobgoblins, like in D&D, the goblins attack humans on sight, use no strategy other than "CHARGE!" and hope you don't get killed, and they get absolutely slaughtered -- are seen, in fact, as nothing more than a nuisance by the adventurers. But at the same time, Hines actually explains exactly why goblins fight that way, and why hobgoblins are nastier and more dangerous, and why both races are seen as little more than a nuisance by the humans. And it all makes sense. He may have used D&D as a reference point, but he definitely made these creatures his own, and it was cool.

But on top of that, in addition to being amusing and nicely reminiscent of my role-playing childhood, the book actually had some serious parts to it. Jig has to make decisions about where his loyalties lie, and if and why he has any loyalties at all. He comes to understand himself and the humans, and he compares the goblin world to the human world, and neither one comes out looking very good, although for different reasons. There's a great moment when he and the adventurers -- who are almost all incredibly arrogant jerks, by the way; the real villains of the piece are not the monsters -- are talking about funeral rites. See, the goblins leave their dead in the passageways of their underground cavern-home, because there are creatures called carrion worms that eat dead things but not living things, and so clean up the bodies for them. The humans are utterly shocked and disgusted that the goblins could be so unbelievably disrespectful to the remains of their honored dead, and Jig is taken aback and says quietly, "They're -- just bodies." Because goblins, who are functionally atheists, don't get attached to the dead, whereas humans are almost fetishistic about them. It was interesting to see an outsider's perspective, one that was actually quite well done. It has a great ending, too. Now I'm on the lookout for the next two books, and hoping there will be more.

Oh yeah: and I finally tried reading Perdido Street Station by China Mieville. He's actually quite a good writer, with some nice characters and interesting ideas, but he worked much too hard to make the setting overpowering and dark, and to make some of the characters horrifying and shocking, and it came off as strained and unbelievable. Plus he uses twenty words where one will do, which is not something I can be overly critical about without becoming hypocritical, but at least I sometimes use fewer words. He never did. So that one's done, and I think I will just give up on trying to partake in the new avant garde literary sci-fi genre. They can keep it.