The Goblin Tower

The Goblin Tower (Volume one of The Reluctant King)

By L. Sprague de Camp

Published by Del Ray Fantasy, 1968

Ok, I'm not gonna lie, the cover of this book is what made me buy, on top of that, it was 2$.

What I didn't expect to find was a compelling and rich fantasy world with a meticulously crafted and well-defined fantasy "system".

I also recognized the author, L. Sprague de Camp, as I'd read a few of his Conan novels in college.

Characters

The main character, King Jorian, is a badass. He's super strong, cool, and he can charm anyone with a good story (more on this later). He's like Conan, but if Conan had studied literature.

The secondary characters include Karadur, an elderly wizard/priest who serves as Jorian's mentor and moral guide as they travel together bring a thing to a place, as is the case of many fantasy novels.

Along the way we meet a few other interesting (and some not so interesting) characters including a friendly ape man, a bombastic snake woman, a nymphomaniac slave, and a bunch of deranged retired executioners.

Tone

The novel is presented in a comedic sort of tongue-in-cheek kind of humour that presents the magic and fantasy elements as almost being too ridiculous to take seriously.

I like this, as I am a fan of other fantasy-humour authors such as Terry Pratchett and Craig Shaw Gardner.

What I Liked

I liked that the novel was an interesting take on fantasy, as it presented the magical elements of the world as being intimately tied to religious practice, very reminiscent of sword and sorcery novels of the era.

As I stated, Jorian is a bad ass, so seeing him either beat the crap out of bad guys or get the upper hand by his surprising wit is satisfying.

I also liked that the adventure takes us all around the author's world, so we get to read about a huge variety of cultures, landscapes, and characters.

It was also incredibly funny at times.

What I Didn't Like

I found that many of the chapters were very formulaic. The setup was that Jorian would get to a new place and witness some sort of injustice, He'd want to right the wrongs, but he'd either fail miserably and escape by the skin of his teeth, or he'd become the area's new hero.

It was mostly fine, but by the last few chapters, it was getting predictable.

Another far to common element of the book was characters (mostly Jorian) sharing stories with other characters in the book. This clearly served to impress upon the reader that this fantasy world was very deep and had a rich lore. But for me, it seemed like the author was padding the relatively short chapters. In one chapter, one such story took up 5 entire pages and didn't serve any narrative purpose to the current events of the chapter.