Thank you NetGalley & Hodderscape for providing me with this e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I’m so sad to say I DNF’ed this one.

I was so excited to read it. A DnD-inspired fantasy with a punny title, pitched as Our Flag Means Death meets Legends & Lattes? Yes please!

But, I just couldn’t connect with the characters. It felt as if every time I was close to feeling like I understood a character’s personality and motivations, a sexual innuendo was thrown in, feeling entirely out of place and at odds with the tone of the scene. This particularly bugged me with the two main female characters: they both had the same, honestly, slightly perverted, tendencies. If it was a one-off comment, I could have ignored it — it might even have been funny at the right moments — but it was so persistent. For the first third of the book, it seemed as if they did little except leer at Logan (there’s a particularly uncomfortable scene where they watch him bathe in a lake). And when Gary showed up, they ogle him instead. It is frequently emphasised how much younger and less worldly Gary is than the other characters, and the more I think about it, the creepier it feels. If the genders were reversed, I struggle to see how it would be published. 

I reached 53% and decided to put it down. I plan to return to it one day, as I am curious about where the plot goes. Just not curious enough to deal with the discomfort right now.