What do you think of Yahtzee's books?

[Drathnoxis]

I listened to Mogworld a couple of years ago and recently finished Differently Morphous.

I thought Differently Morphous was pretty good. It was silly and lighthearted, but still managed to have a twist to the whodunnit that works fantastically in retrospect. I was actually quite surprised how well everything came together in the end.

Anybody else read any of Yahtzee's stuff?

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

I bought a copy of Mogworld back in the day and thought it was pretty interesting. Unfortunately over the years I've fallen off the bookreading wagon, so I couldn't tell you anything about the others.

 

[Silent Protagonist]

Differently Morphous is my favorite of his books. It is incredibly funny and the humor somehow doesn't take anything away from the moments that are meant to be more thrilling or serious. I thought it handled the underlying theme of Political Correctness very well, probably because it mostly stuck to being descriptive rather than prescriptive. It was my first audio-book(turns out Audible got what they wanted out of the exclusive) and Yahtzee does a good read, though one of the book's funniest chapters is somewhat hampered by two characters having an extended back and forth with the same voice. I'd strongly recommend it to anyone.

Mogworld is a close second. The premise is well fleshed out and the book is packed with so many great moments where your expectations of the setting are subverted to great effect. One of my favorite examples of this occurs right at the beginning when a great Necromancer's grand victory of breaking the very laws of reality to raise an army of the undead to do his bidding is somewhat deflated when the undead expect to be paid for their service, turning his much rehearsed victory speech into an impromptu negotiation. The book has a bunch of great characters that were incredibly fun to read about and can be surprisingly complex given the comical nature of the book. The book was a very funny and very enjoyable read.

Will Save the Galaxy for Food was good, though I think it went a bit overboard with foreshadowing its story twists to the point that I began to think the twist was going to be that the twist wasn't going to happen given how heavily he kept hinting at it. I thought the characters were weaker than those in Mogworld, probably because in Mogworld the characters start as cliches and stereotypes that become more human as they further developed and characterized, were as in WSTGFF the characters start off as human and mysterious then become more cliched and stereotypical to fit their roles in the plot as it unfolds. The book is still a lot of fun and it has convinced me that every scifi RPG needs to have a bureaucrat class.

Jam was the only book that I didn't really like. A lot of that is just down to personal preference rather than anything objectively wrong with the book. The bits with the mall Hipsters drag on for far too long and I think Yahtzee greatly overestimated the staying power of jokes about how they misuse the term "ironically". My other criticism was that deaths happen so frequently that they quickly lose all impact, which shouldn't be the case when people die in a story. The book just left me feeling numb and unpleasant.

 

[Chimpzy_v1legacy]

Quick question. I haven't ready any of Yathzee's books, but I do love me some Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams.

So, how likely is it I would like Yathzee's stuff?

 

[Palindromemordnilap_v1legacy]

Quick question. I haven't ready any of Yathzee's books, but I do love me some Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams.

So, how likely is it I would like Yathzee's stuff?

I've only read Mogworld but it had the similar sort of feel to Pratchett or Adams. The idea that world itself is very aware of what kind of world it is and is happy for the people in it to hang as many lampshades as they want

 

[Gatx]

I've read Mogworld and Jam, and they're both enjoyable reads. I didn't even know he wrote two more but I'm assuming they came out during THE DARK TIMES so I guess I'll have to check those out now.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

I always figured Yahtzee's humor was better suited to short, weekly shots rather than entire novel length experiences.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I'd like to try out one of his books some day just to see what gives but I haven't come across any of them so far.

 

[CaitSeith]

I have read Jam and Will Save the Galaxy for Food (well, Yahtzee read it aloud for me). The former is horror/comedy set in Australia. It's effective in the horror parts, and good humor in the rest (sometimes lighthearted, some times dark, mostly funny). The later is a sci-fi/comedy about the far future era of washed-up star heroes. It's pretty funny. It uses and subverts lots of sci-fi tropes, and it's so bloated with metaphors that in one chapter I lost the count on how many the main character used (I think his brain is like a sack full of metaphors floating freely inside it and somehow arranging themselves into coherent thoughts).

Overall, I find his books pretty funny.

 

[Callate]

Jam's pacing felt a little off to me. It didn't help that about three-quarters of the book are silly and relatively light-hearted, for all that it's kind of post-apocalyptic, and then suddenly a bunch of people who have survived a bunch of ridiculous circumstances by the seat of their plot armor are abruptly killed off one after another. I didn't get the sense that that switch was performed for some kind of grand dramatic or thematic reason; it just felt like an author still getting used to the tools in their toolbox. It was still perfectly readable and entertaining, though.

I think Mogworld is still my favorite, just in terns of the number of laughs it eked out of me.

Differently Morphous would probably be second. The "punitively social-justice-focused beyond all good sense" character possibly hits a little too close to home; there are people within my own social circle from whom that character isn't that much of a stretch. The shibboleths are great, the mysteries kept me guessing, and the knowing skewering of certain tropes from fantasy and heroic fiction were well done.

Will Save the Galaxy had its moments, but individual bits (like mathematical terms becoming the standard form for curses) stuck with me more than the story as a whole. I don't think I really connected with the characters.

I will say I think they're all worth a read. There are plenty of genre fiction writers with best-sellers on the shelves who aren't doing anything half as clever.

 

[Drathnoxis]

So like does anybody have any ideas about what is even up with Diablory from Differently Morphous?

Spoiler: Spoilers

Is he possessed by an Ancient? What the heck is his roleplay game supposed to be anyway? Is he actually playing a game or is it just a front?

 

[Scarim Coral]

I liked Mogworld and Jam however I cannot get into reading Will Save the Galaxy for Food.

I don't know the size of it was different to the other two. Normally reading the first chapter get me sitting in to the story but not with the third book.

 

[Agema]

I generally avoid:

a) Tie-in literature (mostly fim & TV)
b) Literature by people who clearly only got the nod from becoming famous in another field.

In both cases, books will tend to be published for reasons less dependent on how good the author is. Broadly, I trust publishing editors on author quality. I had a flick through some books that became sufficiently famous online so that the publishing companies belatedly overturned their prior rejection - and they were mostly awful. In the past I also flicked through a few "author editions" of books which were rereleased which included stuff the editor had originally made them remove, and I could only conclude that the editors had a fantastic eye for trash that needed to come out of the book to improve it.

So I have not read Mr. Croshaw's work, nor probably will without a recommendation from someone I trust.

 

[BrawlMan]

I generally avoid:

a) Tie-in literature (mostly fim & TV)
b) Literature by people who clearly only got the nod from becoming famous in another field.

In both cases, books will tend to be published for reasons less dependent on how good the author is. Broadly, I trust publishing editors on author quality. I had a flick through some books that became sufficiently famous online so that the publishing companies belatedly overturned their prior rejection - and they were mostly awful. In the past I also flicked through a few "author editions" of books which were rereleased which included stuff the editor had originally made them remove, and I could only conclude that the editors had a fantastic eye for trash that needed to come out of the book to improve it.

So I have not read Mr. Croshaw's work, nor probably will without a recommendation from someone I trust.

This. I tried reading one of his books at a Books a Million, but it wasn't happening.

 

[Fieldy409_v1legacy]

I read Mogworld and really enjoyed it. It's good if you like that dry eccentric English comedy like Douglas Adams or Terry Prachett. More Douglas Adams I think.

It's about a zombie npc in a MMO who cannot die because it's a game but he wants to. But it gets weirder than that. Its kinda dark, he tries to kill himself a bunch of times before realising it just makes existence shittier when he damages his body. He ends up travelling with this armless zombie cleric who is all old testament firebrand and is in denial over being undead and a lady zombie who is good at stitching.

Good at subverting expectations. And I did genuinely laugh out loud a couple of times which is rare for me when reading comedic books even though I enjoy them.

 

[Silent Protagonist]

So like does anybody have any ideas about what is even up with Diablory from Differently Morphous?

Spoiler: Spoilers

Is he possessed by an Ancient? What the heck is his roleplay game supposed to be anyway? Is he actually playing a game or is it just a front?

Spoiler: Spoilers

My interpretation of the end was that he uses his special rune circle thing to deliberately make himself a little bit insane(and reverse it when appropriate), so that his cliche mustache twirling villain act isn't an act at all and would therefore hold up against any sort of interrogation or psychic assault and hide whatever his true intentions are and the fact that he is far far more competent than he appears. I think the roleplay game bit was just a very thinly veiled way of him describing his own actions and the events that had occurred to(and reveal) his friend/co-conspirator the priest and give him an indication of what he planned to do next. I got the impression not that he is possessed, but that he is secretly much more hard-line anti-eldritch horror than he appears and likely sees it as absolutely vital to to the survival of mankind to undermine the wave of acceptance and normalization of such entities and those they corrupt. I believe it has been heavily implied if not outright confirmed by Yahtzee that the dark event that occurred in the recent past that nearly wiped out humanity that is repeatedly alluded to in the book was some version of the events from the Consuming Shadow video game he made. One explanation for Diablory is that he was the one who stopped the event, basically taking the role the player had in that game. The new head of the Ministry of Occultism obviously suspects otherwise though. Hopefully we'll get a sequel someday that reveals more about this entertaining and enigmatic character.