The Lost Temple of Ssis'sythyss

By: Jeffery Russell

Narrated by: Faust Kells

Length: 8 hrs and 3 mins

Publisher's Summary

Cursed gems, snake gods, lost temples, dark jungles, and volcanoes. It could serve as a laundry list of things Ruby wanted nothing to do with. 

Yet now she's on her way, in search of a missing friend and with only a journal of cryptic clues and a notorious band of dungeoneering dwarves to guide her.

©2017 Jeffery Russell (P)2018 Jeffery Russell

Two thumbs and a snake tail up!

Let’s start this off by saying I don’t understand the bad reviews for this book at all. Did they get a different book than me? First of all, it’s the third in a series, (though arguably this, like the previous two are stand-alone) so people should know what they’re getting. Second, it’s just finely crafted fantasy humor. It’s not Pratchett, but it is satire with a solid dose of expectation playing and slapstick. I mean, it’s kind of like the dwarves from the Hobbit melded with Disney’s Snow White Dwarves and were given business smarts and skills other than fighting and mining.

So yeah, I take offense to the bad reviews.

Anyway, this book is a prequel of sorts as it follows the time when Ruby the scribe first joined the Dungeoneers as they hunt for ancient naga ruins. Don’t let the prequel status turn you off the book. I hate prequels, but as I said, these books are stand-alone, so you can just enjoy it and not think about it being in a series. Not to mention Ruby is GREAT. Seriously, she puts Durham to shame.

This book is more of a satire on adventuring and economics than a satire or spoof of DnD. Personally, I enjoyed this change, but your mileage may vary.

Long and short of it is this is a top notch entertaining book that had me grinning like a fool most of the time. I recommend this book if you liked the first two books or like a good fantasy comedy romp, now buy buy buy.

3 of 3 people found this review helpful

Another Adventure

I thoroughly enjoy this series and was eagerly awaiting the release of this title. I have listened to both previous books numerous times and love the crazy antics of The Dugeoneers. This book didn't disappoint. It took me a minute to orient myself as this happened before the two previous books and is the account of how Ruby came to travel with the company. It has been referenced in passing in the previous books. This book follows the same pacing of the previous books with the same sort of antics and humor, it did not disappoint. A thoroughly enjoyable tale of a dwarfen team of professional dungeoneers and how a human scribe came to travel with them; with a nearly naked, oiled up, overly muscled barbarian thrown into the mix.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

A decent sword & sorcery book with poor narration

It's your standard sword and sorcery tale, well enough written. It's the narration that is substandard. Faust Kells flat out mispronounces words, saying "faucets" where the word must obviously been "facets", saying "bow" like the arrow firing device where it's meant to be the front of a ship and saying "brassieres" where he was meant to say "braziers" unless the dungeon was actually adorned in oil soaked women's undergarments. But that's not the worst part ,the narrator has strange sentence inflection and sometimes flat delivery, stressing the wrong bits of the paragraph and robbing from the tale parts of its intended impact. That's a shame as it brings down the entire thing. It'd better be on serious sale or you are going to be sore about buying this.

0 of 1 people found this review helpful

where's my Phoenix

this book suffers from one problem from the audio version there's a book missing so throughout the book certain things that have happened in the past books are referenced switch make this book is confusing and just joined it the author and the narrator bring the spoke to a new level because of the neglect to put up the shorter book leaving us to ask where's my Phoenix because without it this is pretty hard to understand the backstory and the nuances between certain characters which is why I was unable to give it more stars which it certainly deserved

1 of 4 people found this review helpful

Did no-one listen to the narrator?

I was completely distracted by Faust Kells' constant mispronunciations. I mean, really? The place was lit by flaming brassieres? That is the sort of mistake I would expect a twelve-year-old to make. Some of them, I found myself wondering if he was doing on purpose.

A pretty good prequel to the other two books in the series.

0 of 1 people found this review helpful