Django Wexler's John Golden: Heroes of Mazaroth will be published by Ragnarok Publications in August 2014.
Information about Django Wexler:
Django Wexler graduated from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh with degrees in creative writing and computer science, and worked for the university in artificial intelligence research. Eventually he migrated to Microsoft in Seattle, where he now lives with two cats and a teetering mountain of books.
He is the author of Roc's military 'flintlock fantasy' The Thousand Names and the middle-grade fantasy The Forbidden Library.
When not writing, he wrangles computers, paints tiny soldiers, and plays games of all sorts.
Click here to visit the author's official website.
Information about John Golden: Heroes of Mazaroth:
The world's most popular massively multiplayer online role-playing game. Tens of millions of players have stepped into the shoes of fighters and wizards, dwarves and koalamancers to battle the forces of evil.
>>Nobody ever asked the forces of evil how they felt about it.<<
John Golden has been asked to extract a fairy from the computers of a finance company, where it's sitting on some vital data. Inside, he finds a depressed Dark Lord and a portal to a realm of fantasy. But when he steps through, he finds himself cast as the villain of the piece, with an army of adventurers ready to thwart his evil schemes. John hasn't *got* any evil schemes, but he realizes he'd better come up with some fast. Unless he can change the story, he'll be stuck in Mazaroth as a final boss... permanently.
A REVIEW OF DJANGO WEXLER'S JOHN GOLDEN: HEROES OF MAZAROTH
Django Wexler's John Golden: Heroes of Mazaroth is the second novella in the John Golden series. It's an interesting and enjoyable combination of fantasy, science fiction elements and humour (I think I could categorize this novella as urban techno-fantasy).
I hadn't read anything by Django Wexler before reading this novella, but I was aware of him and knew what he had written. That's why it was interesting to read this novella. I found myself liking it very much, because the author has a good sense of humour and he delivers humorous moments and funny comments at regular intervals.
Although John Golden: Heroes of Mazaroth is the second novella in the John Golden series, it can be read and enjoyed as a standalone novella. It's nice that you don't necessarily need to read the first novella in order to enjoy this novella. Reading the first novella may clarify certain things, but it isn't necessary to read it (I haven't read the first novella and I understood what was going on and liked the story).
Here's information about the story:
John Golden is a freelance debugger. He's hired to take care of a problem on the computers of a finance company (Trans-Global Financial Products Inc). His job is to extract a fairy from the computers, but things turn out to be a bit more difficult that he thought. He meets a Dark Lord who's a bit reluctant to leave his space. John promises to help the Dark Lord, but things go a bit wrong when he enters a portal where the Dark Lord came from, because he ends up at Heroes of Mazaroth, which is a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG). He notices that he's the bad guy in the game and isn't able to escape from the game...
John Golden: Heroes of Mazaroth offers good and harmless entertainment for everybody who's interested in urban fantasy, computer games and humorous stories. It's one of the funniest novellas I've read during the last couple of years.
The story is clever, funny and at times even a bit sarcastic. I have to mention that I love this kind of stories when they've been written well. In this novella the story is definitely written in the right kind of way and contains plenty of good humour (I found myself smiling and laughing out loud when I read the story). I have to mentiont that the annotations by Sarah Golden (Sarah is John's assistant who's a bit different kind of a character) are fun to read, because they add delightful humour and sarcasm to the story.
One of the best things about this novella is that the author has come up with a totally new and exciting way of writing about fairies. It was refreshing to read about fairies that inhabit computer systems and cause problems. Normally people need antivirus programs to prevent nasty malware and viruses from entering their computer systems, but in this novella you need antifae protection to prevent fairy-infestation.
John Golden: Heroes of Mazaroth is something fresh, because it differs nicely from other similar kind of humorous books and novellas. There are a few authors out there who are capable of writing witty and humourous speculative fiction, but in my opinion Django Wexler has his own writing style that separates him from other authors. This may sound a bit strange, but in my opinion this novella is almost like a combination of The Matrix, Jim Butcher's The Dresden Files series, Dr. Who and online computer games, and it can be read as a light and funny parody about computer roleplaying games and online computer games.
I enjoyed reading this novella, because it was an excellent and fast-paced novella. It offered perfect escapism for hot summer days. I think that readers who are interested in fast-paced and humorous stories will love it.
Because I enjoyed this novella, I think I have to take a look at the first novella, because it'll be interesting to read what happens in it (I'm also tempted to take a look at the author's novels). I sincerely hope that the author will write more about John and his adventures, because this kind of humorous novellas are fantastic escapism.
My final words are: This novella is delightfully geeky and nerdy fun for all who love computer games and humorous stories!