As someone who is trying to get back into reading novels set in the D&D universe. This was a wonderful addition!
The characters are well written and have different personalities and the pacing is amazing

I'm grateful to have received an ARC for this book. All around, this book was a very enjoyable book. I still really liked the characters from the first one, but I feel that their relationships to each other are written even stronger now. The pacing was great and the plot was engaging. A great book if you're looking for a light, easy, and fun book set in the DnD world of Faerun.

This was a fun, quick adventure! As a D&D newbie, I enjoyed the references to pieces of the lore and settings I’ve encountered in campaigns and other media and I think it did a pretty good job of highlighting the different skills and personality party members can bring and how a campaign can play out. Narratively, it wasn’t very complex and I can see where people may be looking for more depth if they’re looking for a fantasy story, but this was still a very fun time and I’m glad I had the opportunity to read and review!

Random House provided an early galley for review.

I have read several of the author's Marvel novels in the past. This is the second book in the new series of Dungeons and Dragons novels by her (the first, The Fallbacks: Bound For Ruin, came out in 2024 and slipped under my radar).

This novel opens with the crew in the middle of a mission. We're introduced to them through their actions; not a lot of details given at first on the back stories as (I suspect) much of that came in book one. Still, the narrative is easy enough to follow with necessary information dropping in as needed.

The Fallbacks are an interesting mix of personalities. Several take classic character archetypes and give them a subtle twist. As far as the world and creatures that inhabit it, it is targeted for readers familiar with the world of D&D as not a lot of time is spent fully describing things outside of what the story needs. That can be a double-edged sword.

Overall, I found the novel to be very enjoyable. As someone who dabbles in his own fantasy tales of similar tone (both as a dungeon-master and a writer), I will certainly draw some inspiration from tales such as this one.

Sinopsis en español :

Puede que los Ret-backs no sean la primera opción de Faerun para salvar el día, pero si el dinero es correcto, harán el trabajo. En esta banda de aventureros, cada miembro juega un papel vital: Tess, la disciplinada ladrona elfa disciplinada valiente; Lark, el bardo astuto; Baldric, el astuto clérigo; Cazrin, el mago inquisitivo; y Uggie, su monstruo mascota que come basura. Entrecierra un poco los ojos y son los héroes que Faerun necesita.

Recién salido de un viaje desgarrador a la infinita mazmorra de Undermountain y la derrota de un poderoso lich no-muerto (con la ayuda de un gusano hambriento gigante o dos), los aventureros son ahora un equipo probado y dedicado, listos para una nueva aventura que los llevará a nuevos y extraños reinos.





Reseña:


Cuando pedí el ARC por alguna razón no me di cuenta que no era el primer libro, lo sé, en la primera oración de la sinopsis dice claramente que vuelven. Esto me pasa por distraída, pero bueno, tuve que leer el primer libro para poder entender.
Estuvo entretenido, no me encantó, pero estuvo bien para despejarme.



Thanks to NetGalley, the publisher and the author for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

The Fallbacks by Jaleigh Johnson is a fun character driven story following a typical D&D party.

Whilst I did like how well the team meshed together in this book, it didn’t really explore deeper into any of the actual plot. It did seem just a touch surface level.

I did enjoy reading this however and it felt very fast paced and it kept my attention throughout.

3/5

Oh, this was a delicious read.

The Fallbacks are back, and things are bigger than ever (and given what they dealt with last time, that might be a big surprise). Ashardalon is back, for one thing! And he's not the only one.

As before, this adventure deftly combines charming characters with a rollicking adventure in a way that feels like playing the game -- this could be any of my main tables I play at, honestly, from the focus on roleplaying through encounters to the way the characters interact to the interesting angles on game mechanics (I LOVE that Baldric's calling on gods is always something where he has to negotiate an offer to get his power; as a player, it reads like, ok, we know what the mechanics do, but in world, the character has to do something to allow it, and I can practically see the player with papers spread out around him that have lists of the different gods and things he might offer them in exchange for which powers). The story is a fun little adventure I could see being played; if not at my own table, this would easily be a live play I'd watch.

It also feels like modern D&D in a way that few tie-in novels tend to. It's not just that it feels like a game in progress (which, I love Drizzt, for example, but those books feel like in-world explorations, rather than something that could fit in a series of game sessions). It's the roleplay focus, it's the style of exposition, and it's the queerness. I'm going to shout out the queerness explicitly, because I'm sure some people will complain about it and I want to put my voice forward in support of it before that can happen. Again, it feels like it could be happening at the tables I play at; I can tell so much I'm welcome here as someone who engages with this world. Love how queer it is. Oh, and it was so balanced with the first book! The characters who got main focus in that had less in this one (while still present, contributing, and involved) and vice versa.

The worst part about reading an ARC is knowing I have to wait even longer for the next book. I'm very excited to learn who's hunting Lark, why Anson's brother tricked him, what [spoilers] wants with Baldric, and more. Hats off to you, Jaleigh Johnson! I haven't been this excited for a book that hasn't even been announced yet in a long time.

I'll be honest: I didn't expect this to be good.

A lot of people who write "licensed" fiction are, let's face it, hacks - and hacks who, all too often, don't have much of a grasp of the basic mechanics of prose.

This author is better than that, and better than the average writer in general.

Because the characters are a D&D adventuring party, it's an ensemble cast. Those can be difficult to do. Giving multiple characters distinctive viewpoints, voices, motivations and backgrounds, and then meshing them together in such a way that they both clash and support each other and all contribute to the overall plot, is not a trivial task, and here it's handled well. The characters have some dimension to them, and they all have believable arcs which are complementary.

The plot trots along at a good pace without sacrificing characterization, though you are expected to be familiar with the world of the Forgotten Realms; its places and creatures and organizations get minimal description. It even took me a while to realize Tess, the group's leader, was an elf, partly because I was left to assume that the people whose species wasn't specified were human, and (unless I missed something) Tess's elven ancestry wasn't mentioned immediately. There's also a good deal of reference back to the previous book, which I haven't read, but I didn't feel lost because of it; everything said about the events of that book is said in a context where it's relevant to whatever's going on in this book.

Overall, it felt like a good, solid pulpy adventure with well-intentioned, capable but flawed characters who bounced off each other in interesting ways.

Review: A crew of magical adventurers called the Fallbacks, leaps and cavorts their way to dungeon treasure. The End. Well there is more, but not much. Lesbian trysts, a missing brother, dragon possession and Familiar love round out the story lines. The gem in this chest are the inter-personal conflicts and resolutions. This interplay really drew me in. Additionally, the dungeon looting, monster killing and fight scenes were spot on.

I received this ARC for an honest review.

Rating: 4.6/5

Wait- I didn’t know what I wanted existed 😍🧝🏼‍♂️
I love the vibe of D&D but don’t really have the time to invest playing it IRL. I already consume media for live games, etc. but THISSS , agh! Brb buying all the books they’ve published thus far.
Thank you for the eARC! I was very intrigued from the first 20 pages and struggled telling myself to go to sleep many many pages later. I binged this book in a couple days!