Illmoor Chronicles, The: The Ratastrophe Catastrophe - Book One Review

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Illmoor Chronicles, The: The Ratastrophe Catastrophe - Book One ReviewI picked up this book because someone (whom I will never forgive) told me that it was similar to Terry Pratchett. I bought it (with REAL MONEY!) and settled down to read it.
It was similar to Terry Pratchett alright. It looked as if the author had read a comic fantasy book before and thought that he could do the same thing. He introduced a bunch of characters (with stock quirks -- "mean", "crazy", "weird", "loony", "goofy", and "greedy"), conjured up an plethora of bizarre locales such as Dullitch, Phlegm, and the like) and used them as the backdrop for a "madcap" send-up of the Pied Piper of Hamelin.
The main problem was that the humor was shallow, at best. The dwarf, named Gordo, had a bunch of short jokes tossed at him all the time. Tambor was a sorcerer who is apparently helpless without his Spellbook (he can't even manage a lock picking spell). Groan is a big dumb oaf in the mold of hundreds of thousands of big dumb oafs. And Jimmy Quickstint is a clumsy thief, or something, I guess. These guys have one joke (Gordo is short, Tambor is weak, Groan is dumb, Jimmy is clumsy).
And it doesn't help that all of the other characters are even less amusing or interesting. The Duke Modeset is a bland Vetinari clone, with even more outward malevolence and less control of his people. He had an assistant (or two) whose names are similar and forgettable. These characters desperately tried to make their pet shticks entertain for the book's run and they fail, badly.
The one character that I thought was mildly interesting was Diek Wustapha, the Pied Piper and unwilling villain of the piece. He was the main reason I kept reading, and the story cheated me yet again of a satisfying end of the character, preferring instead to give me a cookie-cutter ending in the tradition of stories that books like these are trying to mock, not emulate.
I'll probably get the next one out of the library in case it's better than this one. But I still have to give Ratastrophe Catastrophe only 2 stars.
Oh, and if you want to read a genuinely humorous send-up of the Pied Piper story, try The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents. You won't regret it.Illmoor Chronicles, The: The Ratastrophe Catastrophe - Book One Overview

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