A Climbing Stock by Andrew Hiller
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

What a pleasant surprise! I expected a retelling of Jack and the Beanstalk but I didn't expect it to drill down this deep or have quite this much traditional Fantasy adventure including so many dragons and cows and amazingly powerful Corporate Giants getting involved in the whole sordid mess of losing an economic empire.

What?

Yeah! Economic empire and boardroom situations and fire-breathing battles!

Not to mention great wordplay and situational humor. I'll never forget the whole sequence of the Prince and the great artist Buck that depicted the great Kingdom's White House and the portrait of his father George Washington. :)

Seriously. There's a whole lot of Bull in this book. Literally. Or should I say that the golden calf and the religion it has spawned is a true delight? Or how much I love the fact that a Dragon can become a Cow. :)

Don't be a Jack! The corporate world is a real killer!

I was caught on the first page and even though the build-up in the novel was slightly slow for me, the situational humor in the Fantasy and the juxtaposition of the whole corporate world ideas kept me fully invested until the action took off and blew me away. :)

I chuckled quite consistently and the ending was extremely satisfying. :)

Even though I consider the author a friend, I need to reiterate that this is a truly unbiased review.

Thank you for the great read, Andrew!

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