NetGalley Review: Dreadful by Caitlin Rozakis

Hey all, Sam here.

Hello and Happy Book Birthday to Dreadful by Caitlin Rozakis, the lovely book that I’m going to be talking about today. Book Birthdays are some of my favorite days. It’s like I celebrate the book by buying it and taking it home, which is a fantastic way to enjoy the day. The problem is that there are sometimes many books coming out at the same time, and I can’t post up full reviews for all of them on this blog on the same day, so I have to spread them out a little bit.

I’m still working on getting myself back into a regular blogging schedule, so hopefully I’ll get to the point of being able to talk about books a week or two (at least) before their release dates. But I can say that I have another May 28th release to talk about tomorrow, my June TBR post on Thursday, and sharing my April Prompt Share post for Weekend Writer on Friday, before jumping back to an earlier in the month release on Saturday. It’s going to be a busy time on the blog, but that’s pretty awesome.

And there’s only two more months until Gen Con, so I imagine that I’ll be talking to David about getting some Tabletop Tuesday posts up as we get closer to the convention. I also still would like to get WIP Wednesday back in the blogging rotation, but I also just have a pretty big book review backlog, so we’ll see if it happens or not.

Anyway, let’s dive on into the review.

A sharp-witted, high fantasy farce featuring killer moat squid, toxic masculinity, evil wizards and a garlic festival – all at once. Perfect for fans of T. Kingfisher, K. J. Parker and Travis Baldree.

It’s bad enough waking up in a half-destroyed evil wizard’s workshop with no eyebrows, no memories, and no idea how long you have before the Dread Lord Whomever shows up to murder you horribly and then turn your skull into a goblet or something.

It’s a lot worse when you realize that Dread Lord Whomever is… you.

Gav isn’t really sure how he ended up with a castle full of goblins, or why he has a princess locked in a cell. All he can do is play along with his own evil plan in hopes of getting his memories back before he gets himself killed.

But as he realizes that nothing – from the incredibly tasteless cloak adorned with flames to the aforementioned princess – is quite what it seems, Gav must face up to all the things the Dread Lord Gavrax has done. And he’ll have to answer the hardest question of all – who does he want to be?

A high fantasy farce featuring killer moat squid, toxic masculinity, an evil wizard convocation, and a garlic festival. All at once. Dread Lord Gavrax has had better weeks.

My Thoughts

Rating: 4 stars

I went and found this book on NetGalley because I kept seeing bookish influencers talking about either getting an ARC of this and loving it or having it on their highly anticipated list. And you know what, I’m really glad I went ahead and requested it.

This book is cozy and fun and just a shenanigan filled and easy to read story. Much like main character Gav, we the reader are left a little confused and disoriented at the beginning, because the story literally starts right after a magical situation leaves Gav standing in the middle of a dark wizard’s workshop with absolutely no memory of who he is or how he got into this situation.

It doesn’t take long to piece together that Gav himself is the dark wizard who owns this keep, and it is delightful and just a bit awkward to watch Gav try to pretend to be the Dark Lord that everyone expects, when he continually finds himself thinking that this isn’t who he wants to be at all.

We meet quite a few other characters, some who are employed by the Dark Lord, some who are imprisoned by him, and some who just live in the village nearby and are under the Dark Lord’s rule/protection…and so many of them are in similar situations to Gav….putting on a show to be what everyone expects someone like them to be, whether that’s a bumbling assistant, a beautiful damsel, a dumb servant, or whatever.

While this story is fun and funny, and it comes off as light and cozy, it really does examine who people perceive us to be versus who we would wish to be.

And seriously, watching as Gav tries to juggle the needs of the village by throwing an impromptu garlic festival, while also dealing with other dread lords coming for some dark wizard ritual, while also trying to figure out who he was and who he wants to be and who other people are instead of who they’re pretending to be….this book has a lot of balls in the air (to continue the juggling metaphor) and I think it was definitely just a book to make you really think about things.

I definitely think this is an easy read, something I would definitely recommend for a weekend of relaxation and fun.

---

All right, well that is all from me for today. Thank you so much for stopping by, and I’ll be back soon with more geeky content.