Review: Kill the Farm Boy by Kevin Hearne and Delilah S. Dawson

Kill the Farm Boy
(Tales of Pell #1)
Kevin Hearne and Delilah S. Dawson
Release: July 17, 2018
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Once upon a time, in a faraway kingdom, a hero, the Chosen One, was born . . . and so begins every fairy tale ever told.

This is not that fairy tale.

There is a Chosen One, but he is unlike any One who has ever been Chosened.

And there is a faraway kingdom, but you have never been to a magical world quite like the land of Pell.

There, a plucky farm boy will find more than he's bargained for on his quest to awaken the sleeping princess in her cursed tower. First there's the Dark Lord who wishes for the boy's untimely death . . . and also very fine cheese. Then there's a bard without a song in her heart but with a very adorable and fuzzy tail, an assassin who fears not the night but is terrified of chickens, and a mighty fighter more frightened of her sword than of her chain-mail bikini. This journey will lead to sinister umlauts, a trash-talking goat, the Dread Necromancer Steve, and a strange and wondrous journey to the most peculiar "happily ever after" that ever once-upon-a-timed.

Review:
You know that feeling when you finish a book and you know that if you had read it while in a different mood that you would have liked it more than you did? That was me with Kill the Farm Boy. I think if I had waited a read this when I was in the mood for Monty Python-esque humor I would have liked it a whole lot more. I'm not saying I didn't enjoy it but I found it only okay in my current mood. Although, I really love the cover! The art department seriously deserves a round of applause for how stunning it is.

Let's talk about what I liked. It's fun. It takes a lot of the fantasy tropes and stereotypes for certain characters and turns them on their head. I loved that part of the book! It starts off with a drunken pixie anointing a Chosen One, Worstley, and making his goat talk (Gustave reads very much as a goat version of Donkey from Shrek). The characters were great! I especially loved the Dark Lord Toby, who is really fond of cheese, and Poltro, the assassin who is afraid of chickens. There's a lot to like about a book full of murder, love, and unexpected transformations.

On the flip side, I didn't find it as funny as it was marketed to be. I want to say that the authors were trying too hard to be funny but since humor is subjective we'll just say that this book just wasn't my kind of humor. It was overly filled with puns and tended to rely on crude humor and lots of poop jokes which have only ever been funny to me in considerably smaller amounts. That being said, I can see that lots of people will love it for the very reasons I didn't. It's very much like how I don't find the Deadpool movies funny but loads of people do.

I had a lot of high expectations going in because I love Kevin Hearne's Iron Druid Chronicles and Delilah S. Dawson's Blud series. And I found traces of what I loved about both of those series in this book. In my opinion, if you're thinking of picking this one up, you should flip through the first few pages to see if this will be your kind of thing or not.

I might pick up the next book just to see what happens but as of right now I'm not too excited about it.

ARC provided by the publisher via Netgalley.

  

  3 / 5 Stars

Recommended for fans of: Monty Python, Mel Brooks, and The Princess Bride.