Review: FUNNY READ
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 06 19, 2012
Okay, a quick disclaimer here. I know the author, Graeme Smith, through an online writing group, and I read one of the earlier versions of COMEDY OF TERRORS.It made me laugh out loud then. When I reread it this weekend, it made me laugh out loud again.The hero is the Royal Idiot who works for Queen Sonea. Anytime wine's spilled on a visiting dignitary at a state banquet or anytime the army loses a battle... It's always some idiot's fault. And Segorian is that Idiot. He shows up in the right uniform (servant or general or whatever) and gets banished from the kingdom. (Saves relations with foreign countries and keeps morale in the army high, don't you know.) Then he sneaks back through the back door, ready to be blamed again the next time an idiot is needed.The queen kind of likes Segorian, though Segorian's a little too dense (he admits women are an open book to him but he never learned to read) to understand the situation, and sends him off on a dragon-slaying mission with some trepidation. No worries. The dragon's too smart and Segorian's too...Let's just say the dragon turns out to be a main character who helps Segorian and Sonea tackle the bad guy who's coming to eat up all the people of the kingdom.Oh, yeah. There's always a villain in these things. So in COMEDY, we have mayhem, murder, misunderstandings and misanthropy. All rolled up in one book.Readers who enjoy the Myth series of Robert Asprin or the Xanth series of Piers Anthony will delight in discovering a new comic fantasy author. I know I did.