Review by Karl Knopf -- Fish Wielder

[Karl Knopf]

[Following is a volunteer review of "Fish Wielder" by J.R.R.R. (Jim) Hardison.]

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4 out of 4 stars

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Fish wielder by J.R.R.R. (JIM) HARDISON is a story of Thoral the Fist Wielder and his koi fish companion Bradfast (Brad for short) in the world of Grome. Two adventures on a quest to distract Thoral from his troubles. It has it all romance, the already mentioned adventure, action, drama, but most of all comedy. Yes Jim has quite the wit from telling the reader when things aren’t literal, like when he said that someone shot daggers at someone else with there eyes, to reassuring you that something actually happened(he looked like he was about to be defeated. Really he did, I mean it!).While unlike what the description says, he’s no Monty Python, it is because he has established a style all his own.

The romance on the other hand is something left to be desired, than again what do you expect from the old fairytale trope of “hero saves damsel in distress then they instantly fall in love with each other“, though to the author’s credit he seems to deconstruct that very trope with Thoral having misgivings about there relationship. It’s just that I’m not that enthralled by the ”will they or won’t they” situation they are in.Than again that could all be part of the deconstruction.l’m just a sucker for romance though so it could just be me who doesn’t like what he has done with the genre.

I like the little details he put into Grome lore like “what they call tomatoes we call kumquats” and “humans and talking animals alike are openly sold as pets and/or food”.I also like how details from previous chapter gain greater significance in later chapters.There’s also the fact that they have puddings instead of potions, and one of the bad-guy groups is called “The Bad Religion”.

The action scenes are very descriptive, like for example how it is gone over in detail the chain reaction that caused Thoral to accidentally kill three assassins with there own poison dagger in his first encounter in the book, or when he chopped two guys in half in such a way that there butts landed on there heads.

Overall I give Fish Wielder four out of four stars. It was a fun read from beginning to end. I highly recommend it to anyone who likes comedic fantasy. I hope you enjoyed my first review and thank you for reading.

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Fish Wielder
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