And Don’t Forget To Rescue The Princess

Al Breen is an unemployed New York actor who is spending is summer at Cape Cod, in the hopes to write a play. Until a talking cat arrives and transports him to a medieval world where Al is mistaken for a warrior and sent on mission to save a kidnapped princess. Not that he’s given any choice as the King of these medieval lands will chop of his head if he doesn’t go on the quest. And on top of that he must take the princess’ betrothed, Nigel the Nervous.
The unlikely pair blunders through thick forest, upsetting trolls, elves and the odd fire breathing dragon. Only to find when they reach the lands of Mornnnnnnn (no not a typo) the evil leader who, kidnapped the princess, that he lives in a fortress; a heavily guarded fortress!

Personal Thoughts – on reading the book description I thought I was in for a very amusing tale about an unlikely fella, who’s dropped into a dangerous world of magic and mayhem. From page one Al Breen has a sarcastic humour, this continues practically consistently throughout the story. The constant jibing between Al and Nigel the Nervous became tired after a few chapters. Al’s constant sarcastic comments that no one else understood as he referred to saying’s we the reader are familiar with, but in a medieval world would have no clue really began to grate. In the end the humour did feel forced, it would have been much better to filter some humour into a more serious storyline.
There are plenty of situations of danger for Al and Nigel. They fight off dangers in a forest during their journey. Get kidnapped and imprisoned by trolls and elves and have a run in with a dragon. That’s before they even get across a large ocean and tackle Mornnnnnnn. Until this stage I felt the story rambled aimlessly and was practicable. However, the plot did get more interesting when Al and Nigel meet up with some freedom fighters and break into Mornnnnnnn’s fortress. Again, it would have been nice if Al had dropped his particular type of humour, but at least there seemed to be focus to at this stage.
I can’t complain about the writing style, the author did create an easy plot to follow, with scenes that held together. The only thing that spoiled this story was the forced humour that littered every page and that it was so familiar to some other books I’ve read that it felt very predictable and had no real surprises.

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