“I don’t have boots. I’ve never had boots. And my delusions won’t matter if the Skeleton Queen’s army burns the place down and eats us for breakfast. I refuse to die at the hands of someone else’s stupidity.”

“Yes, why bother when your own will do the job?”

Who would win: A racist, corrupt and inept hierarchy and an invincible Skeleton Queen at the head of a massive undead army, or one shitty goblin? This is among the many questions that Tim Carter’s Jester seeks to answer. Other such questions include “why are racists like this?” and “how many bones can one guy break before it stops being kinda funny?”

Jester is about an enslaved goblin latrine slave named Shelly who, after a murder happens in the castle he serves, realizes that all the scheming and politicking that his human owners love is going to get them all eaten by zombies if they don’t stop, so he decides to take his survival into his own hands and carve out some of the personhood that his owners have tried to deny him for his whole life.

There are so many things I love about Jester. Shelly’s narration is sharp and funny and unflinching, and it draws you in right away makes you want to root for him. The other characters are all exceedingly well done, many of them typical fantasy archetypes but characterized with way more nuance than you’d expect in a comedy or, frankly, in an archetypical fantasy. Of particular note is Betticia Flowers, in many ways the book’s deuteragonist. She’s the mistress of the Duke of Halfsock, and like Shelly has no official status and is trying to convince a bunch of stupid people that smart ideas were their ideas. She’s the first person to see Shelly for how smart he is, and to realize that they can use each other to save Halfsock and themselves. There are a lot of other characters of note, some of whom who I can’t say much about without spoilers, but I will say that I really liked Waterford a lot.

I also adore how funny Jester is. It’s not necessarily riotously hilarious, but it’s incisive and clever and snappy in a way that reminds me of Terry Pratchett when he’s being satirical rather than absurdist. It also reminds me of Jim C. Hines, and of what I wish Delilah Dawson and Kevin Hearne’s Kill the Farm Boy had been. It’s aware of what tropes it’s making fun of and critically, why it’s making fun of them. Carter is an author who understands what his work is about and why he’s telling the story he’s telling, which makes the story so much more compelling.

Jester is a very fast paced book where every time Shelly turns around, something new is happening or something in one of his plans has gone wrong and he needs to fix it. Characters come and go into the narrative as if entering and exiting the stage at their cue. The whole thing moves with precision that’s really hard to pull off. But it never feels like this is just some random thing that the author is throwing in the mix to add tension; Shelly spends the whole book feeling very overwhelmed and like he’s barely keeping his head above water, and that comes across in the fact that it really does seem like every time he steps out of his broom closet, there’s a new inept and greedy noble or racist church official or scheming wizard in the mix. He’s a character with no hard power and no control over his world, and of course nobody tells him anything until it’s too late, so characters and plotlines who, in a story about someone else, might have been foreshadowed before they appeared, here just happen and he has to deal with it. The chaos in the narrative runs the risk of translating to the reading experience, but I never felt like I didn’t understand what was happening and why, and I never felt like the book didn’t have clear direction and that everything in it wasn’t intentionally placed there. If I were to make one small complaint about it, I would say that the battle at the end was a bit long for my personal tastes, but not to the point that I found it a problem or anything. Overall, I was super impressed by how fast moving it is, but also with how easy Carter makes it for us to keep up.

The most important theme in Jester, to me, is that of underdogs sticking together even when more powerful people try to force them not to. They are always at their strongest when they band together, and that lesson is reinforced over and over again throughout the book. And it’s true every time, that is how marginalized people survive. It feels like a simple point to make, but it’s also true, and I really appreciated that solving most of the book’s conflicts really did come down to just the people everyone counts out communicating with each other and sharing their resources.

There are a lot more things I want to say about Jester and how much I loved it, but they’re all spoilers, so instead I’ll just say that it’s my favourite book from SPFBO so far. I haven’t stopped talking to my friends and team members about how much I like it.

Quick Pitch

Started from the bottom, now we’re here.

For our MMC, a goblin slave named Shelly, the “bottom” is literally the cauldron where the dirty diapers are washed by him.

And “here” is a political intrigue situation where Shelly’s castle is under threat- and he steps in for personal survival aaaaaaand because the rulers of the castle don’t seem focused on or even bothered by impending doom. Eeks!

Put the poop rag down, a different level ish is going down. Shelly agrees to wear hats he never expected to. Does this mean he’s off of diaper cauldron duty?

Overall Thoughts

Oh, [poop emoji] – this is good. >>> insert rim shot <<<

Honestly, some people are natural storytellers and Carter is most assuredly in this category. I was hooked by the end of chapter one.

I listened to the audiobook and found the narration extremely smooth.

I really love Shelly’s internal dialogue, it’s such a delight to root for him even when the percentages of success feel low.

This is Cater’s sophomore debut, but this is so solid, I’m now adding his freshman debut – a novella titled Majordomo, to my TBR.