Narrated by: Wally Schrass
Length: 3 hrs and 23 mins
Release date: 12-08-17

This book is short. Only 3 hours long, however as the story is reasonably basic, it actually feels pretty long when you listen to it.

This is the publisher’s summary:

I am Brandon Thighmaster. Monk. Hero. Inspiration. I enjoy crunching, squats, looking at myself, looking at other people looking at myself, and long walks on the beach. I also do adventures and stuff, and I guess you can read about them here. But enough about you, let’s talk about me. Brandon Thighmaster.
Steven Wetherell Steven Wetherell (P)2017 Steven Wetherell

Story

Essentially though, it’s a story of Brandon Thighmaster, a monk that is supposed to train body and mind to perfection, however is unbalanced having only trained the body.  He is sent out into the world to find some sort of enlightenment or at least prepare him to the complexities of the mind.

He meets a bunch of adventurers (I think), who have been tasked by a small town to get rid of the local Orcs.  He joins them because he enjoys fighting.

Notes on the story.

We never really find out if the group of people he joins are adventurers in a game, or are actually real characters.

There’s a brief introduction to Brandon, an idiot but spectacular character. And then the story goes on to explain about the mission of the Orcs and meeting a group of what you assume are adventurers, based on similar fantasy style books with weird characters, but then just sticks with this singular story.

I think it spends too much time on this one story, to the point where you actually get bored of it. There are no other stories in this novel, it’s just the one.

The book is funny at times, yet the humour is mainly concentrated around Brandon Thighmaster, the main character as he is physically strong yet mentally … well, hasn’t reached perfection.

Narration

Narration is decent, nothing to complain about here, yet as some characters are rather hollow , the different voices and accents don’t make a big impact on you.

Brandon’s voice is done very well, capturing that self confident kind of air about him.

Relation to similar books in this genre.  Coincidence?

The title states – An Authors & Dragons Tale.  Turns out this is actually a podcast featuring a whole bunch of fantasy writers, many of whom I’ve read before and really enjoyed.

Steve Weatherell is member of this Authors and Dragons podcast in which a group of authors play Patherfinder (a Dungeons and Dragons expansion game) and basically talk shit.

You can find the Authors & Dragons podcast here:

http://www.drewhayesnovels.com/authorsanddragons/1

On this page you can see who is in this podcast.  I only checked this out after I finished the book, but these are the cast members of this podcast and it features a few of my favourite authors, plus a few that I haven’t heard of.

Next to their name are some of the books they’ve written.

Cast
GM:  

Drew Hayes (Super Powereds, Fred the Vampire, NPCs)

Players:

Klaus, the Rogue: Robert Bevan (Critical Failures)
Silas, the Paladin: Rick Gualtieri (The Tome of Bill)
Kutharek, the Cleric: Rob Kroese    (? But I’ll be looking out for books)
Bjorg, the Barbarian: Joseph Brassey (? But I’ll be looking out for books)
Brandon Thighmaster, the Monk: Steven Wetherell (Ep. 6 onward) This book
Fandingo (The Fantastical), the Bard: John Hartness (? But I’ll be looking out for books)

Comparison to other similar books

This is apparently what Brandon looks like, at least according to the podcast.

Steve Weatherell plays as Brandon Thighmaster during this podcast.

Comparing to other authors and their books from this group seems appropriate as they mostly write about similar concepts.

Rick Gualtieri creates an incredibly detailed, thorough and well thought out world as well as great characters with his Tome of Bill book series, Drew Hayes is a master of storytelling with interesting perspectives, powers, characters and mysteries with NPCs, and Robert Bevan seems to focus solely on the characters for his Critical Failures book series.

In comparison to all of these, with the exception of Brandon Thighmaster, I genuinely couldn’t care less about the other characters, they are generally not funny and seem to be more there to prompt the main character to say stupid things rather than to truly interact with him.

Favourite quotes

One monk saying to another as Brandon leaves the temple-
“Maybe he is the ‘enlightened one’.”
“I hope so, because the alternative is that we’ve just sent an idiot to his death.”

-Brandon for the first 3 days just goes around punching animals in the face.

“By the duelling gods, you are a strange and terrible man. Buff though, very buff. “

He looked over his shoulder as his back muscles stood to attention, like extremely well oiled Marines.

Female character- “That vow of celibacy of yours is a damn shame.”
Brandon-  “Hey I’m doing you a favour,… (Pointing up and down his body)…Do you think you could ever get with anyone else after this?”

Brandon talking calmly to a stag, trying to reason with it. “I know your ways, I know your fears…I know for example, that you don’t like….. Being punched in the face!”

Brandon: “We have a saying at the temple, if you seek the path of revenge, be sure to dig two graves, one for your enemy and another…For your enemy, in case you kick him in half.”

Recommendation

While there are a couple of funny moments, there’s not enough for it to be an interesting book, it can’t stand on this alone, nor can it stand on the strength of the story alone, plus I don’t even feel like Brandon is explained enough.

This book promises to be just book 1 out of many in a series, however if it replicates this initial offering and doesn’t improve then I would 100% not recommend this series.
I really hope more development of characters, scenarios and humour is given to the next book. As it stands I would not listen to the next in the series.

Cover was pretty though. Click here to listen to a sample

Get a free trial of audible with 2 free books, listen to books like this for free, & then if you want….just quit before 30 days & you get to keep everything… sounds like a pretty good deal to me.