This sort of tongue-in-cheek humorous fantasy is right up my alley.  I have other reviews of like sorts of books by authors Kevin Hearne and Django Wexler.

This one starts with Gav waking up on the floor of his dread laboratory…with no memory of how he got there, why he has no eyebrows, or even his name.  Terrified that the wizard, whose laboratory he is obviously in, will return any minute; he tries to convince the concerned voices outside the door that he is, indeed, their wizard.  Funny enough, it works; he eventually figures out that is because he is their Dread Lord.  But he doesn’t exactly feel like a Dread Lord nor does he really want to do bad things to people.  Since the goblins who inhabit his dread tower and do his bidding (cooking, cleaning and the like) seem a bit sinister he becomes concerned that should they discover he no longer wants to do dread things, they might kill him.  So he tries very hard to be dreadful. 

His efforts become more difficult after he discovers he has a Princess locked in his dungeon.  After meeting her, he finds it even more difficult to be dreadful when what he really wants is for her to like him.  And after figuring out that it was another, more powerful wizard, who ordered him to kidnap the Princess, and that she is intended to be a part of some sort of dreadful spell, he finally reveals to her that he’s missing his memories of why.  He then figures out that his other self probably had no idea of why either; nor do the other two Dread Lords he meets.  But all of them are utterly terrified of the most powerful of them all, Dread Lord Zarconar.  And any spell that he designed that requires the assistance of three other Dread Lords is unlikely to benefit anyone but Zarconar.

He does, eventually, figure out why he lost his memories and where they ended up.  He has to deal with the existential question of whether getting the memories back – which will explain a great deal – and if he could still be “good” with those memories.  After all, we all are what our experiences have made us.  Gav has a chance to be someone different; but he may need those memories to be able to stop Zarconar.

This was six kinds of fun; watching Gav pretend to be bad and failing miserably but discovering that his goblins aren’t exactly bad either, nor are the other Dread Lords…except Zarconar, of course.  And Gav begins to discover that he really wants to be a better Lord to his decrepit little poor village, and to his Goblins, particularly his valet and cook.  And to his surprise, once they all trust him, they are more than willing to help him foil the nefarious plot of Zarconar; even the Princess, who isn’t quite what she seems either.

The plot was delightful, the characters were delightful; everything was delightful…  But there was the looming questions of whether Gav would be able to stop Zarconar from his unspeakable evil plan, rescue the Princess, help the town be more prosperous, and keep his Goblins from being destroyed by whatever Zarconar was planning.  But the biggest question for Gav was if the Princess would ever deign to like a dreadful imposter like himself.

I just loved how the author gave Gav the chance to be the one to save everything.  His solution, brilliant as it was, was certainly nothing he actually planned; it was more the result of complete terror and panic.  But it worked.

It may look like pure comedy on the surface; but Rozakis manages to turn several fantasy tropes on their head and be a little satirical, as well.  The plot was solid and the characters were much more than their descriptions.  I totally enjoyed this; everyone should give it try when they need something not epic or dense but still satisfying.  ~~  Catherine Book