Slathbog's Gold

ok...i wonder why i started reading this...

A coming of age story with enough new ideas to make it interesting. That said, there are a few things to be aware of. It's basically The Hobbit plus a little Dungeons and Dragons. It draws heavily on Tolkien's the Hobbit. There are a lot of parallels. Also, it's written in a similarly overly verbose “ye olde bedtime story” style. From D&D we get Adventurer's being a recognized profession and the bag of holding.

The last thing that annoyed me was that the protagonist did almost everything by accident. He was still roundly praised for his “heroism”, though. And despite all the talk of power being a responsibility and having a cost, there was no absolutely no cost for our hero. Everything came extremely easy to him and he never had to struggle even once. I'm much more relaxed about Mary Sue characters than I used to be, but it's still disappointing when they're taken to the extreme.

With all that said, if you're okay with the style of prose and the idea that you won't be treading much new territory, this can be a fun read. Just go into it with the proper expectations and you'll do fine.