The Goblin Corps

The Few, the Proud, the Obscene

By: Ari Marmell

Narrated by: James Fouhey

Welcome to the Goblin Corps. May the best man lose.

Morthûl, the dreaded Charnel King, has failed. Centuries of plotting from the heart of the Iron Keep, deep within the dark lands of Kirol Syrreth—all for naught. Foiled at the last by the bumbling efforts of a laughable band of so-called heroes. Still, after uncounted centuries of survival, the Dark Lord isn’t about to go down without a fight, particularly in battle against a mortal! No, the Charnel King still has a few tricks up his putrid and tattered sleeves, and the only thing that can defeat him now may just be the inhuman soldiers on whom he’s pinned his last hopes.

©2011 Ari Marmell (P)2023 Blackstone Publishing

The Antihero’s Journey

This book was a lot of fun.

Pros: Has a great time playing with genre tropes, funny, tongue-in-cheek

Cons: Very episodic (clearly a novelization of a D&D campaign), some fairly gruesome and grim moments (nothing compared to George RR Martin, though)

The narration was pretty good, though I did not care for the constant slurping of the troll’s voice. The narrator is also a pretty slow reader, I listened to it on 1.2x speed.

Different in a good way.

The plot is awesome and different. Imagine Lord of the rings or warhammer but from the orcs point of view. it's a little dark but hilarious the entire time. my only issue is the narrator, some voices like the main teams voice are perfect but the secondary or back ground characters voices are very similar and can get you confused. the main evil guy sounds like Jim Carrey's Grinch but that actually made it funnier for me. overall 4/5. remember grandpa was an orge and grandma was hollow.

Absolutely loved it.

The characters were entertaining and the story kept me interested. The narrator did amazing on changing up voices and it seemed as if they had fun with the read as well.

It's good for what it is --

How would you like to listen to a story about neutral and evil characters? Have you ever wanted to see evil win? Then this is your book!

Now... that's not really my cup of tea, and having finished the book I'm feeling somewhat disappointed about having given this one a flyer / but that's not me arguing that this isn't a book for anyone. Far from it!

Character development in this book is rather good - each individual in the team has their own personality traits, perhaps traits that are basically D&D stereoptypes about their races, but nonetheless personalities that are absolutely consistent and appropriate. Lots of multi-race bickering.

The story is rather well executed, with the team moving from disaster to disaster, somehow succeeding in each case.

But despite some teasing later in the book about the possibility of the team concluding 'those humans aren't so different from us' - there's no such payoff to be had.

The fun of being bad, and all. That's this book.

All three of my favorite characters died.

All three of my favorite characters died. Otherwise, it was a pretty good story. I have never read/heard a book from the perspective of the bad guys, (and actually have them be “mostly” bad guys) I do feel bad for Gimle though.

Raunchy and Crude

I understand that the creatures are rough beings but the cursing and crude dialogue takes away from the storyline. The narrator is amazing, but the writing itself is poor.

A+ fantasy world, w/o authors love & proper pacing

This is not a book about misfit heroes. More like The suicide squad. A gathering of unwilling individuals of, at the very best, questionable morality. Main story is happening in the background, after heroes of the human-centric countries sabotaged an attempt at the time magic by the undead mage king who's ruled over a multi species country (incl. trolls, orcs, gnolls, ogres etc., species usually assosiated with the forces of the evil, excl. elfs, and with human minority) for centuries. Affected by the spell having gone astray human-/dwarf-/elf-centric countries mount the largest offensive ever against the mage king's kingdom while he's supposedly weekend after having attempted such a large scale spell.

Members of the Goblin Corps are unapologetically true to their character. The hotchpotch mix of a society ruled by the undead king, based on hierarchy of strength doesn't let the reader forget that it's being kept together by the citizenry's fear of the said undead king first and foremost. The characters of goblin corps members are more than what they first appear, this incongruity is 50/50 the expected, e.g. big hairy ape person whose main focus is eating, makes the keenest observations and offers simple but true solution, and the unexpected, e.g. the troll member of goblin corps.

The construction of the story is very hectic. Book starts in the middle of the fight between the heroes and the undead king, followed by a montage of the goblin corps assembling, then diving head first into the series of trial by the fire missions of the goblin corps. Starting the book this plot construction left me dumbfounded and stumbling to follow what's going on. Once the series of suicide missions start prior events take a back seat and focus in on adventure of goblin corps.

Conclusion: 2/5. Listened on Audible included in plus catalogue. Narrated by: James Fouhey. Book is not bad, felt like The Wandering Inn, but without the love the author of TWI has for his work. Great general idea for the fantasy world, exposition introduced in a forced way, right as the event is taking place (the city in the chasm, the (relics of) forgotten gods, etc.). The book suffers from it's construction. Hyper-focused on action, leaving very little time to enjoy the world and let the exposition rather than the dialogue drive the plot. Bad value for the length of the book - 1.61 $/hour (38.00 $ /23 hrs 37 mins ).

Values:
Terrible: >1.66 $/hour
Bad: 1 - 1.66 $/hour
Good: <1 $/hour
Dream: 0.4 - 0.27 $/hour