2 out of 4 stars
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The title Fish Wielder caught my attention immediately, both as a quirky title and in a "what kind of book could this be?" sense. As a lifelong fan of writers such as Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams, I'm always looking for the next comic/parody writer, so I was excited about reading this.
Fish Wielder is a fantasy parody centered around Thoral Fist Wielder, who is a barbarian hero with a smaller, wise-cracking sidekick in the form of Brad the Fish. Thoral is depressed, which becomes understandable much later on in the book but in the beginning it comes off as irritating. He heads off to what's known as a particularly dangerous place, where he finds himself caught up in a plot involving evil sorcerers, elven lords and princesses and the quest to destroy the dread Pudding of Doom.
Unfortunately the poor writing skills make it fall flat to the point where it wasn't apparent until the fourth or fifth chapter that I was actually reading a parody as opposed to a novel that was just very badly written. First it's as though the author wanted to write a serious novel, then turned it into a parody, then turned it into a semi-parody of Lord of the Rings, then tried to go for comic-serious, then it's back to Lord of the Rings. It's not until the last parts of the book that it becomes apparent which story the author wanted to tell.
The editing is generally excellent with very few typos. The writing, however, has far too much telling in the beginning and fight scenes run along the lines of "Thoral drew his sword. Then he stabbed the monster in the gut with it. Then he stabbed the monster in the left foot with it. Then he chopped off the monster's head and the monster died." Analogies tend to be clumsy and overly complicated (such as when the character regains his footing "with the agility of an acrobatic dancing cat trained in martial arts") and there's a lot of rehashing the same information. I lost count of how many times I was told that elves in Grome have their own names for things.
To be fair, however, the writing and storytelling both improve greatly in later chapters to the point where I was enjoying it a lot from around Chapter Thirty. It reads as though the author wrote this over a long period of time and honed his writing skills along the way, but never went back to proofread the first part of the book. The early parts break the fourth wall with comments like "Only guess what?" in the narrative, but these are largely absent from the later parts which makes for a much better read. There was one very clever Chekhov's Gun in the form of the 'thin black rectangular box' that I honestly didn't see coming and which hooked me a little more into the story when the nature of it was finally revealed.
The climax is satisfying to read on several levels and the author hints via the main character that this might be the first book in a trilogy, and the standard of writing improved so much throughout the book that I would be interested in reading more.
All in all, the twists in the story give the impression that this could have been a fantastic story under different circumstances. The author knows how to imagine a story and its relevant twists and turns but at this point he lacks the experience needed for this particular story to achieve its full potential.
I rate this book 2 out of 4 stars. The poor quality of the early parts make it impossible to rate it 3. However, if partial ratings were possible, I would have rated it 2.5, as the writing really does pick up and the plot come together smoothly as the book goes on.
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Fish Wielder
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