Something (Full Murderhobo Book 1)
This book is not what I expected it to be. Not. At. All. I had passed over reading it because the title sounded tongue in cheek, and a bit funny. I thought this book would be full of humour, and I will be honest, I often don’t get humour in books, so I avoided reading it. This year, I decided I would try and read completed series only, if possible because I have too many “in progress”, so I looked at this again. It is one of a trilogy, so I thought, “Not too many to books to read if the humour is something I turn out not to enjoy, and I do like th way Dakota Krout writes, so let me give it a go”. There is not much humour in this book!. It is not funny at all. Oh, how I misjudged it. Although the odd random comment like, “Shut it, mouthbreather,” did raise a chuckle.
“Wahhh!” he yelled, as he fell backward in an extra manly way.
The Prologue to the book had me hooked, straight away. We start out be meeting a True Bard called Zed, and immediately we have questions. What is different between a Bard and a True Bard? Why do Bards need to be “bound” and who to? Who is Zed really?
“My name… is Zed.”
“Ha! I bet it is! Zed is the name of every Bard that has been through this city in the last five years!” The bartender roared with laughter as Zed’s face twitched.
Zed introduces the tale he is about to tell, which is a tale of Luke, the Muderhobo.
LUKE
Luke is the son of a leatherworker and is friends with André the blacksmith’s son, and Taylor, a noble’s daughter. We see that he has grown up in a happy enought household with a family that loves him. We like Luke, and don’t know a lot about his friends at first, except that they are about to be “tested” for potential, as is not uncommon in books of thie genre. The Kingdom is at war, and for those of age who are tested and have no potential power, military conscription is their future. For those who do have potential, it is training and being bound to the Kingdom. `either way, we know Luke is going to end up bound and fighting for the Kingdom.
It seems strange that we meet Luke and it seems like he is to be the main character, however we abuptly change direction as we start to learn a lot about Andé and Taylor’s training in more detail than we do Luke’s. However, when we do learn about Luke, he seems to be trapped in a situation with no mentor, no other people, and no potential to be trained or grow.
Luke’s sanity deteriorates as he spends an excessive amount of time in a tutorial. I won’t state the time, so as not to spoil it for you, but suffice it to say, we watch him unravel as he spends far too long with no other humans around. At first, you might think, “He is being a bit weird? Why would be do that? Why would he act like that?” As you progress further in the book, you realise it is because he is unravelling mentally. In fact, he becomes so out of synch with what we might consider to be normal that is is even difficult to feel sorry for him. He does grown and develop, unconventionally and becomes a mighty brute, with zero social skills and quite a simple mentality. By the end of the book, I don’t like Luke, but I can’t find it in my heart to hate him. He becomes powerful, of that there is no question, and is exactly as we expect. But for a main character, you are left with a remarkable inability to mesh wtih him. This is not a bad thing, storyline wise, but it is a challenge to be invested in his story.
“I’ve tasted insanity before… it needed a little bit of tartar sauce.” *
*(tartare if you are British!)
ANDRE
Andre’s powers do not come in the field you might expect of a blacksmith’s son who has been learning to be a blacksmith himself. it seems unlikely that his powers would be quite fat fetched from his life experiences to the point of testing. he is trained in an unkind way, and does develop his power, but it takes a slight turn in a direction that seems like it wouldn’t go well with his class. He seems like a really nice guy though and is the easiest of the characters to like. He spends less relative time training than Luke does, and only gains two abilities, but still ends up quite powerful. He has a caveat though, which manifests during his training story, as to what he is allowed to do with his power. It is a significant limitation on the face of it, but he manages to work around it.I did find myself puzzled a couple of times over the direction his power took. He pays a price for everythng though…
“Damage taken - health regained - damage taken - health regained.”
TAYLOR
Taylor ends up being the team leader, and seems to take to it automatically, maybe by virtue of being a noble’s daughter. She ends up liking her mentor as little as André like his. We are not hugely clear on what Taylor is like before her training, but by the end of the decade of it, she presents as cold and hard, and somewhat selfish, interested only in what will make her powerful. That is, until we get to a boss fight, where she suddenly presents as self-sacrificing, which confused me. She learns all of the social graces, and I mean all of them, with a ruthless precision, and you can’t help but feel that there is no grace in her soul. it is almost dysfunctional, how cold and aloof she is.
“There are no compromises on the path to power, unless the cmpromise is worth more than what you give up.”
ZED
Who the hell is Zed? He spends only two and a half years training. He is stifled by his trainers, and is now subject to a time dilation, so by the time his friends complete their training, he is significantly weaker than them. he still ends up teamed with them and they have to carry him through the rest of the book, oftentimes literally. Zed doesn’t have a lot of istory with the three friends, but he fits in a better than Luke does after training. I imagine Zed has still to come into his own. At this point, even Zed doesn’t know what he brings to the table.
“One sacrificed his mind. Two offers her life to protect others. Three is eaten by his creations to bring life and death. What is four… what am I willing to do for the power to change the world?”
The Four are drawn into a boss fight towards the close of the book. I felt that the boss fight wasn’t as stressful as I would expect it to be, but it did what it needed to. It wasn’t bad. I just didn’t feel as immersed in it as I have been in other novels.
I really liked this book, despite not liking most off the characters. They have inconsistencies, and I would not be shocked if is was said that they had PTSD. Dakota Krout has given us something different to read. His characters do not develop in the way we expect and they are not obvious hero material apart from their power level. I am looking forward to seeing what happens to this buch of overpowered misfits get up to in book two! I will leave you with this little gem of a quote: