A Practical Guide to Conquering the World by K.J. Parker
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Getting through all three of these Siege books has been a real pleasure. In each of these, we get to see a different aspect of life and profession but even though the times aren't the same, the wider world is.

Above all, the main first-person characters are nicely droll and ironic. Their meteoric rise from truly humble beginnings is a delight. The way each of them gains their fame is both quirky and amusing.

In this particular book, we get away from a humble engineer or a poverty-ridden stage actor and live a life of a lucky, but minor translator for a distant embassy who just happens to survive his nation's ruin and his boss's suicide.

From there, it just gets wacky cool, jumping from an impossible situation to a life of book-reading pleasure to being welcomed by cannibals to becoming a prophet and then the supreme leader. You know, normal, obvious stuff that happens to all us academic types. :)

I had a great time. It's light epic fantasy, with all the humor AND the twisty plots and huge battles, wrapped into one.


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