Title The Warslayer Series --- Author Rosemary Edghill Cover Art --- Publisher Baen Books - 2002 First Printing --- Category Fantasy Warnings None Main Characters Glory, Belegir, Ivradan Main Elements Gods

LIVE THE LEGEND!

Gloria "Glory" McArdle plays Vixen the Slayer in a straight-to-syndication TV show where even the fans say the villain is the better actress. The wizards of Erchanen have been searching all the worlds to find a hero, and Vixen the Slayer is the last name on their list.

The Warmother, imprisoned a thousand years before by Ginnas the Warkiller, has broken free of her ancient chains. If a hero can't be found somewhere in all the universes to fight for them, the people of Erchanen are toast. But is it Glory they're looking for... or Vixen

It all seemed to be a perfectly straightforward misunderstanding when Belegir was explaining it in Glory's dressing room. The reality—if you could call it that—isn't just fighting for her life. Faced with a challenge like that, what can a girl do but pick up her magic sword and her stuffed elephant and give her trademark battle cry:

"Hi-yi-yi-yi! Come, Camrado! Evil wakes!"

I picked up this eBook for free from the Free Baen Library. Most of the books there are part of a series (sometimes not even the first??), teasers to get you to buy the rest. And while there's nothing wrong with that, this one is an actual standalone.

Around the same time I was also reading the Thomas Covenant series by Stephen Donaldson, and since both were about regular humans being sucked into a fantasy world as its saviour, thought I'd do a quick comparison.

Covenant - unlikeable main character, difficult writing with heavy use of a thesaurus, lots of key aspects from Lord of the Rings, overall depressing.

Warslayer - very likeable main characters, easy to read, and while not particularly unique in concept or plot either, I wasn't sitting there ticking off everything that had a match in LotR, overall serious but also lots of humour.

Think a fantasy version of Galaxy Quest which was actually mentioned in the book along with Buffy. It kind of spoofs those shows a little, and in fact went so far as to write up episode summaries for the fictional Vixen tv series. Might actually have made a decent series, I was a Buffy fan after all! It contrasts the cheezy, campy TV shows with what being dragged into a real fantasy world would be like.

It isn't all fun and jokes though, several serious issues are addressed, the big one being the nature of War, and the balance between having violent tendencies that start wars, and the potential for violence that allows you to defend yourself.

And unlike most books, as Glory points out, characters do at times need to go to the bathroom! It had some Australian slang, all of which I either knew or could make out through context. However the Allimir understood the references all too readily, for a race that is unfamiliar with Earth let alone Down Under.

But it was a lot of fun I and I really enjoyed it. Maybe could have done without the bit in the front that is trying to make it seem like the story that followed was written by a third party even though we get a first person narrative. The episode summaries were also unnecessary, but one can always skip those bits and get right into the story itself if one prefers.