Customer Reviews (9)

Seriously great for kids
I'm basing my review on the very real fact that this book was meant for 5th and 6th graders. Here we have a fantasy novel with just the right amount of humor and "10 dollar words" to get a young middle schooler interested in reading fantasy fiction.The characters are in no way evolved and the plot is generously sophomoric, but it's cute and fun.And really, there's something to be said for cute and fun - not everything has to be War and Peace.Kids will like it as an introduction to grown up type books and adults will like it for the tragically obvious, but funny parallels to modern government and politics.

Sort of a watered down Terry Pratchett
I picked up this book because someone (whom I will never forgive) told me that it was similar to Terry Pratchett. I bought it (with REAL MONEY!) and settled down to read it.

It was similar to Terry Pratchett alright. It looked as if the author had read a comic fantasy book before and thought that he could do the same thing. He introduced a bunch of characters (with stock quirks -- "mean", "crazy", "weird", "loony", "goofy", and "greedy"), conjured up an plethora of bizarre locales such as Dullitch, Phlegm, and the like) and used them as the backdrop for a "madcap" send-up of the Pied Piper of Hamelin.

The main problem was that the humor was shallow, at best. The dwarf, named Gordo, had a bunch of short jokes tossed at him all the time. Tambor was a sorcerer who is apparently helpless without his Spellbook (he can't even manage a lock picking spell). Groan is a big dumb oaf in the mold of hundreds of thousands of big dumb oafs. And Jimmy Quickstint is a clumsy thief, or something, I guess. These guys have one joke (Gordo is short, Tambor is weak, Groan is dumb, Jimmy is clumsy).

And it doesn't help that all of the other characters are even less amusing or interesting. The Duke Modeset is a bland Vetinari clone, with even more outward malevolence and less control of his people. He had an assistant (or two) whose names are similar and forgettable. These characters desperately tried to make their pet shticks entertain for the book's run and they fail, badly.

The one character that I thought was mildly interesting was Diek Wustapha, the Pied Piper and unwilling villain of the piece. He was the main reason I kept reading, and the story cheated me yet again of a satisfying end of the character, preferring instead to give me a cookie-cutter ending in the tradition of stories that books like these are trying to mock, not emulate.

I'll probably get the next one out of the library in case it's better than this one. But I still have to give Ratastrophe Catastrophe only 2 stars.

Oh, and if you want to read a genuinely humorous send-up of the Pied Piper story, try The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents. You won't regret it.

A genuine catastrophe
This book strikes me as a combination of RL Stein, without the original plot, JK Rowlings, without the descriptive imagery, and JRR Tolkein, without the grand theme.The non-ending is so out of character with the rest of the book it will leave the reader wondering why anyone would buy the sequel.If there were a zero on the scale, I would give it.

FANTASTIC!!
Personally I loved this book, I felt it explored the tale of the pied piper and gave it an interesting new twist. Just because it is comic fantasty it should not be likened to pratchett, personally I found the characters much more enjoyable the humour was well writtenand the stroy gripped me right through to the end. I brilliant book that I thouroghly enjoyed reading, and I can't wait for the next one.

Almost a ratastrophe
David Lee Stone's first Illmoor Chronicle is not quite a catastrophe, but it's not good either. The first of this fantasy series, "The Ratastrophe Catastrophe," is one of those books that has to strain to be halfway funny and a quarter entertaining, but doesn't quite manage it.

Evil magic possesses a very ordinary young man named Diek, making his eye glow and giving him the power to charm animals and people with music. At about the same time, the ancient, run-down city of Dullitch is suddenly overriden with thousands of giant rats. Diek offers to charm them away, for a price. He does so... only to be informed that there isn't enough to pay him.

So he charms all the city's children away. So the dim Duke hires some not-so-competant mercenaries, including belligerent dwarf Gordo, crocheted-hat-wearing giant Groan, and has-been wizard Tambor. But can they find the missing children and defeat the evil magic in time, or will the parents of Dullitch revolt?

Something magical is missing from "Ratastrophe Catastrophe," and it's not just because of the constant comparisons to Terry Pratchett. A few too many things -- Dullitch, the Duke, the guilds, even the magical possession story -- are similar to Pratchett's Discworld, but that wouldn't be a problem if Stone had crafted a funny, witty fantasy.

Unfortunately, he tried and failed. With an old plot like the Pied Piper, a story needs exceptional wit to stand out. Unfortunately Stone seems focused more on contrived jokes that really aren't that funny, like hair loss or the Tower of Screaming Doom. They're a little funny, but not so funny that you might actually laugh at them. If he just let the humour flow, it would have worked better.

And even more unfortunately, all the time that Stone spends on his jokes takes away from the characters. They're all paper-thin one-joke characters -- inept wizard, big doof, grumpy dwarf, corrupt politicians. And the most interesting characters vanish pretty quickly, such as the weirdo who is mad because he LIKED having a rat infestation.

Humorous fairy-tale retellings are a common thing, but David Lee Stone adds little to the genre in "The Ratastrophe Catastrophe." Here's hoping the second book of the series has some substance. ... Read more