Rune Service

Dwarf for Hire, Book One

By: J.B. Garner

Narrated by: Almond Eastland

Length: 8 hrs and 16 mins

Publisher's summary

A prince in danger, an epic quest, and a cup of coffee, all at your local Easy-E-Mart!

When Mary Stone started her overnight shift at the convenience store, she never expected to run into an elf begging for help because she is supposed to know magic. Key word, supposed to.

Now she’s caught in a world where dragons are real, were rabbits are a thing, and the creatures that go bump in the night really do hide under beds.

And all of them are after her.

Worse, if she doesn’t find a way to master her powers and save the elf who turned her life upside down, she may never find out the one thing she’s been after all these years. The truth about who she really is.

©2017 James Garner (P)2019 James Garner

Very YA paranormal story; terrific narration

“Rune Service (Dwarf For Hire #1)” provides excellent narration, a great picture that was a terrible cover choice for the audiobook, and a mildly entertaining story that was much too YA for me.

The cover was wrong, because MC Mary Stone tells us about a billion times about her beard, and that if she cuts it off it grows back in an hour. Also, she describes herself as no beauty. I suppose that if the cover featured a gnarly bearded woman the book might not attract as much attention, but I dislike covers that don’t match the characters.

The story has some cute moments, but I think a 14yo would have enjoyed the story more than I did. Mary uses the word “lust” a lot, but there’s nothing explicit in the story as she lusts after a male elf, and frequently ogles the female wererabbit and a female elf. It’s all very PG romance.

Much of what makes the book very YA is that the Elf, a noble, wants to be called “Elfie”, the fearsome bounty wererabbit bounty hunter Riba is called “Bunny”, and the nasty villain is called “Snakey”.

Elfie is pretty annoying, but Mary and Bunny are pretty entertaining, as are the two dimwitted henchmen sidekicks. The story features Mary learning she’s a dwarf, and learning of the paranormal world as she tries to get Elfie out of trouble with his father and gangsters. Nothing really much to say about it.

Despite the terrific narration, I’m rating this as 3* - meh, and would only recommend the book to a young tween or teen.

I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

My rating and my review was not in anyway affected by my having been provided a review copy.

Couldn't finish it

Wrong narrator. She could not lower her voice enough to portray the men, which most of the characters were.
If all the knowledge Mary needed are ancestral memories, why were they dormant until the elf showed up? She would have realized her "doodles" were really memories when some of them randomly worked
They never talk about how she was raised, only that she ran with the carnival for a while.
A dwarf and a high elf? Both species would feel that match is gross. Especially the dwarves.
I couldn't finish it. Two stars because it's just cruel to leave an author one. This book was horrible.

Really tried.

The narrator was a little nasal but I may have judged her more from the story than her narration.

As for the story, I tried to like it. Fantasy has never been my thing so I gave this a lot more effort than I would normally have, trying to overcome my queasiness at the idea of a woman with a beard. As the book added characters I liked it less and less as I became increasingly confused and impatient.

I just don’t know where this is going, and am not interested enough by halfway through chapter 4 to hang in there.

The book cover doesn’t match the story at all (at least as far as I’ve gotten).

I received a free copy of this book.