Wednesday, January 31, 2018

Review: The Jester

The Jester The Jester by Michael J. Sullivan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This novella, or maybe even long short story, is really a shaggy dog tale. A fair number of things happen, but they all serve to underscore the “punch line” of the piece. (To avoid an immediate spoiler, I’ll say that later.)

With that, this is essentially Dungeons & Dragons fiction. It was fun to share with my son on a recent road trip, but it’s so linked to genre and convention, that I doubt I’d have the patience for something longer in the same vein.

Four adventurers – two professionals who seem to be the protagonists of most of Sullivan’s work, a wealthy woman, and a pig farmer – are trying to find a treasure stolen by a long-ago jester and hidden in a dungeon. To Sullivan’s credit, he doesn’t waste much time. We open with our heroes falling from a substantial height after a skirmish that we get caught up with later. The idea is adrenaline from the get-go.

Before long, they find themselves in a room with a couple obvious escape options. And, since our characters sense the convention of which they are a part, they make two crucial inferences: 1) They will have the opportunity for only one choice, and 2) The choices reflect the will of the jester, who has built this dungeon to teach those he hated a lesson.

So, they determine that, since the Jester hated greed and cowardice, the option that least reflects those qualities must be the one.

It’s hardly a surprise or a spoiler that they choose correctly, but the twist comes at the end. [SPOILER] There we find that the jester, who stole “the most valuable thing of all,” merely stole his own freedom. That’s the message of his tomb, and it’s the shaggy dog ending. Everything contributes to that payoff, and there’s a kind of “wah, wah, wah” sound effect as their own greed gets mocked and unfulfilled.

So, this is what it is. There’s a cleverness and a skill to it, but it’s certainly not my thing. I note, however, that Sullivan seems (on Goodreads at least) especially generous and attentive to his readers. That’s a good thing, and it goes a long way with me. I’m grateful to have had this on a long and tired stretch of a night-time drive, and I’m grateful it gave my son and me a nice home-stretch diversion.


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