Four characters are recruited by someone named Leader for a quest in a fantasy world.
That's what originally caught my attention with this book. A quest, a group of characters. In the end, I unfortunately didn't get attached to the characters, and I didn't enjoy the humour which felt forced, and not that funny.

Thank you, Netgalley for providing me with an e-arc of this!

I went into this hoping for some really quirky high fantasy dnd vibes & I hate to be admitting this but I really could not bring myself to get any further than the first page. From the first line & the writing style, I felt in my soul I would not vibe with this book.

This was so disappointing.

This was a good idea let down by the way it was written jumping backwards and forwards in time with each character.

This made the story feel really disjointed and very difficult to follow.

A bit more thought into the way the plot was laid out would have made this a lot more enjoyable.

Ratings 3.5 stars

*I received a review copy from NetGalley for my voluntary and honest review.

Meet Serena, Orchid, Tresado, and Foxx (with two exes). The four of them are hired by the enigmatic Leader to travel upriver and discern whether tales of a powerful magician are real or not. This magician lives in a palace at the end of the river and is said to grant one’s deepest desires. And all poor Serena wants is for people to stop loving her. See she has a diamond embedded in her chest that contains a love spirit, and in order to protect their host they make people fall in love with this host. Which for a barbarian north woman is pure hell. Along the way they have to deal with ancient cities, pygmy forest dwellers, water spirits, and a seemingly somewhat alive pleasure palace.

This book reads like a session of Dungeons and Dragons. I haven't played in like a decade but this book kinda makes me wanna start again. Each of the characters are well rounded and fit their parts in the story well. Also the banter between them made me laugh out loud a few times. One thing that threw me throughout the book was there were a whole bunch of random time jumps. A lot were used as exposition to reveal character backstories and some world building. However there was a time jump about 10000 years into the future that I didn't understand why it was there. But there are upcoming books in the series so maybe it was just seeds for a future book. And I definitely will be picking up future books. I look forward to their travels.

NO RATING

I got this version to help me follow along with the audiobook (which I enjoyed immensely) . There is a lot of bouncing around through time, place and POV, and being able to actually see the words really helped to ground me and make things less confusing. Once I got used to this writing style, I no longer needed to follow along with the text but I sometimes still did, just for fun.

I can't give a true rating for this version of the book but I can say that I usually do struggle with books that jump around so much.

If you are still interested in enjoying this story but don't jive well with the writing style, I do highly recommend the audio version. I found it fun and most enjoyable.

a very fun fantasy novel! i found the characters quite loveable but i think the world building could’ve been developed better. i didn’t really enjoy the constant flashbacks but other than that, it was pretty good.

Serena and her friends found themselves hoodwinked and deceived by a magical being. Their quest has suddenly turned into a survival quest, froth with unimaginable evils. It was interesting, adventurous, and filled with magical mayhem. It was entertaining but had one flaw there were too many episodes of going back in times for my taste.

A decent fantasy novel. There was humor and some good action. Sometimes the humor was a little bit forced. I did like how the group worked together and it felt like there was a real bond between them. I had a bit of a problem with the flow of the story. There was a lot of jumping back and forth between point of view and between the present and past.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC in return for an honest review.

I have... mixed feelings. I think that perhaps this book would be better for someone a little younger, so I didn't get the best experience that it could have given.
There is a lot of bouncing around different POVs and flashbacks, but they were done very well - better than a lot of other books I've read. It can be genuinely funny, but sometimes the humour is a little forced - but again, perhaps it's just aimed at a lower reading age than mine.
All in all - a decent book, but I would say for younger reading age.

Sadly, this book isn’t for me.

I didn’t enjoy the humour, or the way the book was written. I struggled honestly to even follow what was going on.
I’m disappointed in myself because I can see how much time and effort the author put into this book, but I have to be honest. I really didn’t like this book. I’ll leave it at that.

I requested this book because it was marketed as being a lighthearted, humorous mystery for those who like magic and Dungeons & Dragons (to paraphrase the official description.) While the story was of a somewhat humorous fantasy tale, it just didn't do it for me. I found the humor felt like the author was trying too hard to be funny the whole time. And the characters' backgrounds were told via flashbacks that often felt like they were unnecessary and cropped up way too often, interrupting the main narrative to an unreasonable point.