Dan the Destructor Book Review- Cave To The Cross

Dan the Destructor By Rob Rimes

Synopsis:

Dan gets sucked through a portal to another world of sword and sandal. Muscley guys punching monsters and evil wizards trying to take over the world! But then launches in the monster truck with rocket launchers! It’s all quite silly – as it’s supposed to be!

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Review

This book is a fish-out-of-water story where our hero shows up from our time and place to a new time and the tone is established when we are introduced to him by his first word of an explicative. So elements of humor will abound here. The good thing with fish-out-of-water stories is that the main character can be a foil for the audience. We learn when he learns and exposition dumps make sense and follow the story; which also helps the reader.

Rimes treads on some sword and sorcery fantasy tropes to move the story and adds some technology to the mix. And when I say the story moves – it moves quick! There aren’t histories given of forests or rulers. Fight scenes and conversations take the time to get the message across and no more and then we’re moving again. So if your qualm with fantasy is the slow pace then the book doesn’t fall into this at all. The fish-out-of-water story can also get lost in the shock and “this isn’t real” refusal of the main character to continue. Again, moving the story quickly is the motivator.

Our main character is fine enough, he is just an average Joe. Soft, pudgy American who is working a 9 to 5 office job. The one bit we find out later about him that will help him later in the story is that he was in the military at one time. I would have liked this tidbit to be dropped a little sooner and earlier in the story as when it’s revealed it seems more of a handwave explanation that something built into the character. Dan is almost a sidekick to his friend Fenrick. Fenrick is a fun Conan-like hero character who the story “should” be about in a traditional sense. Rimes makes the choice of giving Dan some special help to adapt him to his new world better. One is to give Dan the ability to understand everyone in English by the good ol’ classic “a wizard did it” Simpson’s explanation. The other help might be an issue for some as it seems a bit too easy.

This other help is almost rendered moot by a revelation and gifts of assistance given by other characters to Dan. And here’s where I have my biggest issues with the book. The humorous tone of the book is the author’s choice to lean into. I just would have liked it leaned into more! Treading on fantasy motifs and putting a current-day average Joe allows for a lot of comedy, especially with the inclusion of later-revealed technology. And there is some of this, it’s just that Dan is given almost too much, and soon the story is over. Of course, this book is a series (what fantasy book is not part of a series these days?) but I like a book, especially the first book, to stand alone well on its own. Dan is critical of the bad guy’s plan in that it sounds like a “cheesy bad guy plan”. That’s great! But the story just kind of brushes over that with that line and continues on. But there are some great, epic-totally-rad-excellent-tubular! moments – and then the story ends in the middle of a quest. Some revelation occurs but there’s just an epic high-five “let’s do this” scene as the heroes go into the next scene which is the next book.

There is an end story that’s a bit confusing as to why it’s added. It seems like a disconnected story to the main plot and the tone is changed to a serious fantasy one. It seems like the character shares one quality that Dan also gets but a change in subtlety is not expected from the quick-moving, humorous main story.

Overall, the story is well-written and you can tell the author has a flair for the 80’s vibe with the humor and tone of the story. It would have been better to lean into that a bit more. The story moves very quickly so a lot of the fantasy tropes are used for the benefit of the story while not needing the long, drawn out world-building or endless walking scenes. I would maybe pick up the next book in the series but this review is just looking at this standalone book.

Final Grade

C+