I was looking for something nice and comforting to reread, and I picked up Dark Lord of Derkholm, which (as I said a couple of years ago) doesn’t quite fall into the comfort book category, but is the right sort of thing. This is, I think, my third time through the book, and I have to admit I was disappointed.
I think that the problem with the book as a regular re-read is that it’s really a one-gag book, or rather, that there is one Big Gag in the book. It’s a good gag—an unscrupulous entrepreneur from our world runs tours of regular people into an actual fantasy world with actual wizards, dragons, elves, bards, etc, only the actual wizards, dragons, etc, are not enough like standard bad-fantasy-novel wizards, dragons, etc, so they have to pretend. Thus all wizards are forced to grow beards, whether they want to or not; they all have to take turns pretending to be the Dark Lord, they have to lay seige to each other’s castles and consult Oracles and all that, or at least pretend to.
And it’s well done, funny and snarky and wicked and all that. Only that’s the sort of thing that doesn’t work as well on re-reading. What does? Oh, plotting, of course, and certain kinds of dialogue, characters that grow on you, and anything that’s really terrific. And, I suppose, an underlying seriousness, only I think there is an underlying seriousness to this extremely silly book, and it doesn’t seem to help. Hm.
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.