A humorous adventure story of mercenaries and murder, spies and stones, plotting and punchlines. It’s categorised as fantasy, although it’s fantasy in the sense of being set in a different time and place (‘the Kingdom’), rather than being about wizards and dragons.
The story follows a farmer named Greg, who finds a strange red stone while ploughing a field. It’s probably valuable, so he wants to sell it in order to buy a new plough. However, everything goes chaotically wrong as he and his brother Ralph attempt to keep the stone out of the hands of various criminals in the city of Calver. There are some fun twists and a lot of comedy violence. The writing style is amusing and reminded me of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld. I liked the chapter titles too, such as ‘All You Need is Love (and a Really Big Sword)’ and ‘If in Doubt, Hit It’. The story is not my usual kind of read, but it was a good piece of escapism for me.
The cover image is very striking, the relatively huge size of the red stone representing its value to the city.
Greed is the first of a series, Seven Deadly and Four.
Independently published in 2021.
Sounds interesting! I love the chapters’ titles, I can imagine the overall style, and the cover is quite attention-grabbing.
Thanks for your comment 🙂 The cover is so eye-catching and clever too.
Woah!! the cover! Love it! The chapter titles sound so amusing! Sounds like a fun read 🙂 Great review, NS.
Thanks Jee 🙂 It’d good to have escapist reads especially in these times. The cover is fantastic isn’t it?