Critical Failures VII

There is more busy work here then satire. It is an adventure full of events, but not as fun as the previous ones. Katheryn is the only character who becomes a better person in this story. Cooper somehow too, because of his lawful good intelligent axe, Naabi. The others are still just a bunch of assholes.

The following contains SPOILERS. It is a not very good summary of the story. I don't want to spend much time writing this.

Tim turns out to be alive and well. He is the one who captures Dave, having turned into a wererat himself. He happens to have a master plan in order to defeat Mordred, but decides to leave his friends out of the loop because their a bunch of losers. The thing is, turning into wererats changes your alignment to evil, which is an explanation for why he and whoever gets lycanthropy becomes even more assholes themselves.

Dave having become a wererat himself can now potentially help him. Tim have became the leader of a gang of wererats, teleported into his home reality, although keeping his halfling body, and smuggled guns into the fictional world. His gangs betrays him, and he teleports back to his home reality, with Dave and a hostage from his former gang. He is confronted by a cop, take him as a hostage, and through him gets some information on the investigation of his disappearance some months ago. When other cops shows up, he is again forced to escape and teleports back to the fantasy world. He ditches Dave, is pursued by Cooper, who was also bit by a wererat. They ended up in a desert, both as wererats. Cooper leaves Nabbi behind.

Katheryn and the other members of the Whore's Head Inn, plus the dark Elf Tanner, decide to take the avatar of Mordred that Cooper had captured to a safe place. They go back to the (former) Frozen Island, now a tropical paradise. They plan to establish a new base of operations there. In the way she defeat more pirates. She finds a good place to stash Mordred. She comes through as a good leader, makes some though decisions but gives her friends a sleave of hope.

Chad and Julian go back to the Moon of the Crescent Shadow. Chad disguises himself as a musician and Julian his manager. He is very successful singing Neil Diamond songs. They find one of the die, but they attracted too much attention, and Mordred shows up to get it. A wizard they had befriended teleports them to safety. Then the wizard teleports then back to the Frozen Island at their request, after a signed contract that bound them as business partners.
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Randy, Denise and Jake, a newly arrived character from their home world go to examine rumors of a poweful Bard in another continent. They acquire passage on a ship from and old acquaintance of theirs. Denise is pregnant with scorpion babies, Randy has a special paladin mount, his pet baselisk Bazel. They eventually use the Fozen Island as a bargaining chip, and in order to prove it is now habitable, the captain takes them there.

Everyone in the island, except Tim and Cooper who are in the desert, Mordred escapes. A big fight ensues, with some pirates who came to take revenge, rising a water elemental. Katheryn metamorphed into a shark and kills Mordred.

I agree with other posters that this was hard to get in to due to not recalling where our protagonists where in the last book. It was still an enjoyable read but I would have appreciated it more had there been a “what has gone before” section at the start of the book to remind me where we were at.

Its still 5 stars in spite of that in my opinion as the humor puts it over the top.