“Rojuun” by John H. Carroll
Rojuun is another free fantasy novel that I started on my trip but just finished. It’s set on the world of Ryallon, and features a misfit band of adventurers as they try to make some sense of their lives and accidentally get roped into saving the world.
This book tries to balance both epic fantasy and a lot of humour, and I think it would’ve been better if it had just stuck to one of the two genres. It fails at being a humour book by killing off a bunch of characters to start the story, and the cavalier way that the main characters act afterwards doesn’t reflect that story at all.
The worldbuilding was pretty standard, although I did enjoy some concepts, like the mysterious appearance of the Rojuun. The characters are all Mary Sues, and I had trouble thinking of them as actual people. The writing seemed a bit simplistic (lots of telling and not showing), which also got a bit grating. The romance was also a bit amateurish and somewhat uncomfortable, given the relative maturity of the characters involved. (I also felt the same way about the romance between Siri and the God King in Warbreaker.)
An okay read – I probably only finished it because I’m compulsive about finishing books. I’m somewhat curious about what happens next, but probably won’t get to the other two books anytime soon.