What happens in a world where the 40% of the economy is based on loot from monsters, when you start running out of loot?
You could say Orconomics is just a book of adventuring fun on a background of a financial crisis, but that would be selling it short. It’s great commentary on the unsustainability of any economy based around a bubble, if you replace “Professional Heroics” with “Loans or other stuff I don’t normally pay attention to” you’ve got our daily life.
I listened to this and the narration was great.
There was a lot I loved about this book.
I liked the characters a lot. There’s the seasoned dwarf veteran, Grom Ingerson, trying his best to keep his party together and make it out alive. My favorite though was his goblin squire, a shadowkin that Grom rescues and who ends up following him like a puppy, growing into a trusted friend. There’s an elven ranger well past her glory days, trying to recapture her sense of herself while battling healing potion addiction (side note, how is healing potion addiction not a bigger problem in the fantasy world? It seems so obvious now). I don’t want to give away spoilers, but if you look at the cover of book there’s a really cool character on there.
The story starts off pretty common, unlikely band of heroes brought together more of less against their will (it’s only more for one of the characters, a pretty naive prophet of a crazy goddess) to go on the quest. I really liked how through the eyes of the naive priest, and the voices of the veteran heroes saying so, we question the black and white view of heroic quests. I’ve seen a few books bringing up the “orcs are people too” theme and I’m all for it. – Oh right, story, it starts pretty clear and then towards the end of the book it’s surprising, after finishing this one I instantly picked up book 2 so my timeline’s a bit vague, so I’m worried about giving spoilers here.
The humor is my favorite part, I generally love comedy fantasy, and I was not at all disappointed. I was happy with the way everything worked together, from the funny puns, to making fun of capitalism and deconstructing classical fantasy tropes. I was really hating on Goldman and Bags going on about how they care about poor people, but not if it hurts their profits, until it clicked how real that is.
I’m also seriously questioning “good” dungeons and dragons characters I know, that spend their time stomping around killing other people for loot.
Recommended for people who like satire, obvious one there, quest and adventuring themes, RPG games. I’d especially tell people who loved Kings of the Wyld to try this.
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