Son of a Liche

Son of a Liche is the sequel to Orconomics, an SPFBO winner from a couple years ago. Orconomics was super charming; it involved satirizing the classic DnD type adventuring, and while I thought the plot was lackluster, it was laugh out loud funny quite often, and was never boring.

Liche is a bit of an opposite situation. I found the plot and characters much better this time; after having the characters and world develop a bit in Orconomics lent this book a helping hand. However, the charm of the premise and humor faded quite a bit for me. A lot of the humor in the original stems from how the world itself works and how that leads to amusing situations. This book wasn't unfunny, but a lot of that was lost. Instead, we had a lot of repeat jokes about never splitting the party and how Dwarves don't like people.

The main problem is that this book does not justify its length; it is nearly DOUBLE the size of Orconomics. And it's just not necessary. The middle of the book could almost be cut out entirely and I don't feel like we would have missed anything.

But this book is not a total bust, and I did enjoy it. If you loved the first one, I believe this one will have enough for you to enjoy. This is my favorite quote, which genuinely got a good laugh from me:

“One could imagine uses for Great Eagles on just about any quest the Heroes guild could undertake! Why, how many strange and dangerous journeys could heroes skip if Great Eagles were at hand to carry them to their destination? And what dangers could they escape if the eagles were waiting to take them away? I should imagine you'd want to employ these eagles all the time.”

“Oh, we would, sir. But the accursed creatures have unionized!!”

I would rate this as a 3.5, rated to a 4 for making me laugh out loud a few times, which is hard to do.