Mogworld

By: Yahtzee Croshaw

Narrated by: Yahtzee Croshaw

Length: 13 hrs and 8 mins

Publisher's summary

In a world full to bursting with would-be heroes, Jim couldn't be less interested in saving the day. His fireballs fizzle. He's awfully grumpy. Plus, he's been dead for about sixty years. When a renegade necromancer wrenches him from eternal slumber and into a world gone terribly, bizarrely wrong, all Jim wants is to find a way to die properly, once and for all.

On his side, he's got a few shambling corpses, an inept thief, and a powerful death wish. But he's up against tough odds: angry mobs of adventurers, a body falling apart at the seams—and a team of programmers racing a deadline to hammer out the last few bugs in their AI.

*Mogworld is the debut novel from video-game icon Yahtzee Croshaw (Zero Punctuation)!

©2012 Yahtzee Croshaw (P)2012 Yahtzee Croshaw

Critic reviews

"The first legitimate breakout hit from the gaming community in recent memory."—Boing Boing

Unique, Funny, and Entertaining

I loved the humor and the odd perspective this story had. I'm not sure how to praise it without giving any spoilers, but it definitely scratched an itch for a humorous fantasy novel and was expertly narrated.

The narration gets better

I listened to both DEDA files books first and loved them. This being his first book, I believe, Yahtzee definitely gets much better at narration which helps the whole experience.

Hilarious Satire and Rather Deep

Croshaw’s debut novel is a hilarious romp that is as dark and cynical as it is deep and philosophical.

Loved the book

pretty sure this is Yahtzee's first book. It shows. he wrote what he knew and it's outstanding, but his performance is not great. For a lot of sections he drones a bit, just reading, not acting. You can frequently hear him clear his throat or swallow some spit. But the book itself is hysterical and just a good time all round.

An absolutely hilarious book

I'd heard a few good things and once I tried it I was absolutely hooked. it took a chapter or two to get the concept of where things were going, but both the story and the narrative are absolutely delightful. I can't recommend this highly enough to anyone who wants a fun read.

It's about finding a way to die

A very enjoyable story. Even the unlikable characters are likable. I went into this blind and it was exciting piecing together what was going on with the world before it's all spelled out.
The performance felt a bit off, however. To begin with, it's a bit jarring to hear this man talk at a normal pace. There are some long silent pauses, a few sentences that get repeated, and at one point you can hear a siren in the background. I'm pretty sure the author sat down in his living room with a microphone and a hard copy and just started reading.
All that can be overlooked though. I'd still recommend this to anyone who loves stupid humor with a dry delivery.

Very entertaining story

I love other books from this author/narrator so I came to this one with some expectations. The story is very entertaining, fun, quirky characters as the author usually writes. My concern with this book is his narration. I didn’t find it fitting. I think this book would benefit quite a bit from another narrator or even a full cast. So I do recommend it but keep that in mind.

Excellent story, and I love that the author narrated it.

Even though this was one of Yahtzee's first stories, it is still enjoyable, funny, and well written.

An unexpected amount of punctuation

After close to 16 years of listening to the author of Mogworld provide video game reviews at a rapid-fire pace that, according to YouTube comments, has frequently confounded new listeners, hearing Croshaw reading his novel slowly and clearly took a pick axe to the base of one of those pillars that holds up my established reality. It took approximately 30 minutes for me to adapt fully. Yahtzee has developed individual voices and speaking patterns for each character (likely during the writing process) that came out cleanly. One character's consistent use of third-person self-reference was annoying for a short time until the character grew on me. This recording was apparently created in 2012, before Audible raised their standards for quality. The audio is a touch scratchy and, though I actually enjoy this, the author can be heard turning pages throughout his reading of the story - in my opinion, it provides a more comfortable relationship with the audience.

Mogworld's story is centered around an undead novice mage. The connections to video games and, more specifically, massive multiplayer online gaming is not readily aparent for quite a large portion of the novel. I appreciate that Croshaw didn't immediately slap the listener in the face with, "Video games are what I know, so you're not idiotic enough to believe I would branch out with my first published novel, were you?" He left hints that built toward that revelation until making the connections blatant.

It's hard not to compare this novel to other works that connect to gaming. Stross and Cline both created better stories and were more innovative in their ideas. That said, Croshaw's concepts were predictive of what the gaming industry has moved towards (and will very likely continue to do in the future). I write this review after watching a recent Extra Punction presentation on games that try to do too much. As much as I and the author fear this trend from reaching its pinnacle, I can't deny it is likely inevitable.

I'll rate this novel as "If I didn't know who wrote this, I would have correctly guessed after 20 pages".

Wildly Entertaining

Loved it. I haven't read a Yahtzee book yet that I didn't love. Wether writing about knights and magic or a space captains adventures in space, one things for sure, you will be engrossed and laugh out loud entertained.