Book review: Goblins! by Richard Pett

The forty-seventh book I read in 2018 was Goblins!: The Adventure of the Wise Wench by Richard Pett.  Pett is largely known as a creator of adventures and campaign settings for roleplaying games, and he is clearly influenced here by the goblins of Golarion, the setting of the Pathfinder RPG.  Pett, in fact, wrote We Be Goblins!, a justly-famous adventure created for Free RPG Day in 2011, in which the players get to play, well, goblins (which usually play the role of easy-to-kill speedbumps in the way of player characters).  Goblins! is basically We Be Goblins!: The Novel, which means it is a great deal of fun.

Goblins are violent, lazy, stupid, comically-incompetent creatures, with the possible exceptions of their females, some gifted specimens of which gain the role of Wise Wench, and Urgh Tricksy, sometimes known as Upside Down Face because his head is on the wrong way, with the mouth at the top and eyes at the bottom.  Urgh is informed by the Wise Wench, who traffics with such gods as Lord Noc, Demigod of All Wind, and the dreaded Queen Quench, the Moist One, Queen of Boring, the Extinguisher of Bonfires, Bringer of Black, Lady Funless, Madam Dull-and-Damp, Mistress Tedium, the Insipid Crown Princess of Dreary, the Bore, and thus knows everything that is going to happen, that he is destined to become the village hero.

Along with his companion Sorry and Moaris the Minor Apocalypse, son of BigBad Chief Runty Miffed, a sort of goblin Lord Flashheart, Urgh sets forth on a quest to save the goblins of the forest from the invading giants, a species which has all the vices of goblins but is bigger -- and we all want to root for the underdog.  While the heroes are off on their quest, the giants must be held off by the vain King Stormgrunties, his adviser Looti Lovelilips, Head Thug Durth Dimbits, and Master Whippet by such means as an iron hamster, a giant nose, and -- worst all all -- the king's own clever ideas.

Pett leaves the door wide open for a sequel -- indeed, the Wise Wench at one point confuses this quest with one that she and Urgh will be on in the future -- and if it comes to be, I will be first in line to read it.