Review of "The Kobold Wizard's dildo of enlightenment +2" on 'Goodreads'
1 star
Short Version: Clever concept, poorly executed.
Long Version: The premise is that characters in a D&D game become aware that they are characters in a D&D game being run by sex obsessed teenagers. An interesting premise, but one that the book never actually leaves until the last few pages. Instead, the book simply explores scene after scene of self aware characters caught in a world designed by horny teenagers: in other words, bad porn.
In between the bad porn we get some potentially interesting looks at how the two self-aware characters start to come to terms with their realization, but rather than spending sufficient time on these ideas, we get more time spent on the bad porn.
The premise also is ripe with humorous potential, but while the author makes a few good jokes, most of them are instead undermined by the very premise of the book. Most of the …
Short Version: Clever concept, poorly executed.
Long Version: The premise is that characters in a D&D game become aware that they are characters in a D&D game being run by sex obsessed teenagers. An interesting premise, but one that the book never actually leaves until the last few pages. Instead, the book simply explores scene after scene of self aware characters caught in a world designed by horny teenagers: in other words, bad porn.
In between the bad porn we get some potentially interesting looks at how the two self-aware characters start to come to terms with their realization, but rather than spending sufficient time on these ideas, we get more time spent on the bad porn.
The premise also is ripe with humorous potential, but while the author makes a few good jokes, most of them are instead undermined by the very premise of the book. Most of the humor involves the pointless deaths of NPCs, but the premise establishes that these aren't just NPCs, but actual people who simply don't know they're part of a game, so what otherwise might be funny just comes across as sad.
There's even some brief musings about the nature of god that applies to the real world, but it takes up maybe a paragraph or two before the author moves on.
Did I mention that the book is illustrated as if by the teenagers in the game? Yeah, bad porn poorly illustrated.
Spoiler Alert:
Near the end of the book we finally advance past the premise and have the characters decide to act against the wishes of their players which eventually results in the players being transported to their world, where they are rapidly killed by some of the characters that they created. Given that the players had no idea until that very moment that the characters they created were real, and there's no indication that they would have continued to play them if they had known, their "punishment" seems a bit unfair.
The whole thing was just very unsatisfying.
