Audiobook Review – NPCs (Spells, Swords, and Stealth, Book 1) by Drew Hayes, Narrated by Roger Wayne (3/5 stars)

Reading Level: Adult
Genre: Fantasy
Length: 7 hours and 50 minutes (289 pages)
Publisher: Tantor Audio
Release Date: September 23, 2014
ASIN: B00NHXX342
Stand Alone or Series: 1st book in the Spells, Swords, and Stealth series
Source: Audiobook from Audible.com
Rating: 3/5 stars

“What happens when the haggling is done and the shops are closed? When the quest has been given, the steeds saddled, and the adventurers are off to their next encounter? They keep the world running, the food cooked, and the horses shoed, yet what adventurer has ever spared a thought or concern for the Non-Player Characters?In the town of Maplebark, four such NPCs settle in for a night of actively ignoring the adventurers drinking in the tavern when things go quickly and fatally awry. Once the dust settles, these four find themselves faced with an impossible choice: pretend to be adventurers undertaking a task of near-certain death or see their town and loved ones destroyed. Armed only with salvaged equipment, second-hand knowledge, and a secret that could get them killed, it will take all manner of miracles if they hope to pull off their charade. And even if they succeed, the deadliest part of their journey may well be what awaits them at its end.”

This is the first book in the Spells, Swords, and Stealth series, Right now there are four books out in this series. I was really excited to read this and ended up being somewhat disappointed in it. Everything about this is “fine” but not really the awesome satire I was expecting.

I listened to this on audiobook and the audiobook was decent. The narration was pretty typical, I didn’t love it or hate it.

This is a very basic swords and sorcery adventuring story. The twist of having NPCs be the adventurers looked like it was going to be fun initially but it ended up being kind of bland.

The book bounces between our world (where people are playing the RPG) and the other world (where the RPG is real life for the NPCs). The bulk of the time is spent in the RPG world. I thought the transitions between the two were a bit jerky and hard to follow.

The characters are fine. There is an initial mix-up where the NPCs try to take on stereotypical adventuring roles but then find out they are better suited to other roles, this was cute but predictable. The story is fine, our NPCs go on an adventure to save their town and end up dungeon delving for a rare magical artifact. Pretty much everything about this series was fine.

Overall this was okay, but not great. Pretty much everything about this story was typical fantasy adventure, it was pretty underwhelming. I guess if you are interested in a straight-forward dungeon delving type of fantasy adventure you might like this. I personally don’t plan on continuing with this series, everything about it was “eh” for me.