Book Review: Mogworld

Source: Amazon.com

Mogworld, by Yahtzee Croshaw

From the book’s cover:

In a world full to bursting with would-be heroes, Jim couldn't be less interested in saving the day. His fireballs fizzle. He's awfully grumpy. Plus, he's been dead for about sixty years. When a renegade necromancer wrenches him from eternal slumber and into a world gone terribly, bizarrely wrong, all Jim wants is to find a way to die properly, once and for all.

On his side, he's got a few shambling corpses, an inept thief, and a powerful death wish. But he's up against tough odds: angry mobs of adventurers, a body falling apart at the seams and a team of programmers racing a deadline to hammer out the last few bugs in their AI.

Mogworld is the debut novel from video-game icon Yahtzee Croshaw (Zero Punctuation).

Mogworld is a comic fantasy novel in the tradition of Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett, with a video-game twist: the main character is a minor character in a massively multiplayer online role-playing game.


Synopsis:

I'm going the lazy route for this part of my review and quoting another author's description of the plot. Many thanks to ChrisMB, who reviewed Mogworld for Fantasy-Fiction.com, from which I have lifted this synopsis. 

...it’s about a fellow named Jim: the son of a pig farmer, who in defiance of his father’s wishes to carry on the noble family tradition, runs away to a mage academy where he is subsequently killed by in a battle against a rival school. And so Jim enters the utopia and serenity of death, only to be forcefully ripped out of it and back into the world of misery and the living. Now he is one of many undead to serve the necromancer Deadgrave, an all-around honestly delightful chap with an excellent feel for employee needs and winner of the award for Name that Most Obviously Dictates Your Career.

It’s during this time that Jim finds out that sixty years have passed and all isn’t what it seems. People have stopped aging, the whole population has become more barren than a late night TV show host’s well of monologues, and apparently the world is infested with angels that are either having a grand old time controlling adventurers or deleting things. Jim, however, cares nothing for this and just wants to find some way to die for realsies this time. And so our tale proper begins: with a grumpy undead mage being followed by two equally undead associates – one acts like one of those annoying cheerleader characters from an Americanized anime, minus the obvious sex appeal due to her state of being dead, and the other a candidate for first undead member of the Westboro Baptist Church. Add on an incompetent thief, a religious zealot who thinks he’s speaking to God, and a cast of one-shot characters who serve as stereotypes of our favorite MMO and fantasy tropes, and that’s essentially Mogworld.

Oh, and did I forget to mention? It turns out the whole thing is actually an MMORPG (that’s short for Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game for those who’ve been living in a Mole People Hill for the last few years). The adventurers that are suffering from a disease that makes them pose and run around silly, are player-controlled characters, and a small team of programmers are rushing to solve the problems in their world. Think The Matrix if it had a one-night stand with Tron and then their child eventually grew up and married World of Warcraft. That’s essentially Mogworld in a nutshell. - ChrisMB, Fantasy-Fiction.com

The author, Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw. / Source: GiantBomb.com

What I liked about it:

The story-line is interesting, to be sure. But it would be just another sword 'n sorcery title that you can find a million of in the paperback shelves in any brick and mortar bookseller, albeit with a twist toward the video game angle, if not for Croshaw's humor. Mogworld is sometimes ascorbic, dripping in deadpan, and laced with a sharp wit and an even sharper tongue. There were some lines in the book that, if I had a physical copy available to look them up again in, I'd put in this review. There were some remarks made in the narration or the dialogue that just killed me.

I'd say the best part of the book was Slippery John, the "rogue" character (if you've played any D&D-clone game, be it tabletop or computer-related, you'll know what a "rogue" is) who always refers to himself in the third person and has a knack for trying to talk his way around situations.  I can't explain it well enough to do it justice, but he's the sort of two-talking rascal that gets all the best lines in a movie, if you know what I mean.

What I didn’t like about it:

Well, the ending was OK, but it didn't fully satisfy after all the build up. Croshaw has a knack for telling a tale, but the ending, though it fit the story line, just seemed a bit off.  I don't know how to explain it. It wasn't a let down, per-se, but it seemed to be missing something. Maybe the point of the tale got in the way after everything was said and done. That point was, if I saw it correctly, that our man (err- undead man, that is), doesn't have to be a hero, he's more of a protagonist. There is an applicable sense to this that seems to be what Yahtzee is putting across, but to me... well, I enjoyed his storytelling so much that the "moral," if you could call it that, seemed like an addendum. A small quibble, I know, but there it is.

Also, and this is for those who might mind, Croshaw is not one to mince words. His humor is full of vulgarity and is pretty hard on your ears sometimes. I guess you could say it isn't a clean book, though it isn't especially obscene either. I'd call it school-yard humor, but it's a bit higher-brow than that. More like calling a spade a spade, I suppose. Does that make sense? If you've ever watched even one of Croshaws's electronic entertainment reviews on The Escapsit.com (Zero Punctuation, it's called), you know what I mean. Let's face it, he is kinda crude. But for me, this didn't detract too much. Like Monty Python humor, I suppose. That's the best I can put it.

The cast of characters from Mogworld.  As mentioned in my review, I liked Slippery John best.  I'll leave it to you, the reader, to discover the characters in more detail, when you read the book. / Source: cronobreaker.deviantart.com

What I learned, if anything:

That Croshaw can write as well as he reviews. Not much else, I suppose. It wasn't an educational book, but more along the lines of humor-filled candy for the brain.

Recommendation:

I'd say yes, I recommend Mogworld, as long as you enjoy the subject matter (or can at least bear with it), and don't mind the crudity and the gross-out factor (our undead protagonist Jim loses a lot of body parts along the way, which might be gross for some readers). For me, I liked Mogworld, and would read more from Croshaw. Good stuff.

Learn more about Mogworld, by Yahtzee Croshaw, on Amazon.com

And here is one other opinion on Mogworld, if you were curious.


The parting comment:

Source: LOLSnaps.com

You'll have to click on this one to see the details.  Sure, I'd go.  But how good can the food be, if you have to pack it in through all that?  But hey - free food!

It'd be silly not to include a link to one of Croshaw's video game reviews after having just reviewed one of his books.  Here's a recent one that deals with the classic Nintendo 64 game title, The Legend of Zelda, Majora's Mask.  Of course, a WARNING up from: Croshaw's language is crude, crass and very direct.  You have been cautioned.