Hello, Adventure-Raisers (parents)! Today I want to give you a quick glance at something… well, I can’t call it near and dear to my heart, but I think I can say that I… I liked it? Errr, I guess I liked it for what it is. Welcome to Session 39: A Book Review!
I am speaking of course of the D&D culture phenomenon “Dungeons and Drama” by Kristy Boyce (https://www.kristyboyceauthor.com/). Not to be confused with her other 2 novels, “Dating and Dragons” and “Hot British Boyfriend.” About a month ago, Barnes and Nobles was pushing “Dating and Dragons” fairly hard, giving out a d20 to go with the purchase and everything. I immediately wanted to review this author for the blog, but I opted to read the first installment of “Dungeons and Drama” just in case the stories were connected. With that kind of a setup, I thought this book was being billed as a good introduction to TTRPGs, disguised as a YA novel.
Well, first point I need to make is that this book definitely prioritizes being a YA novel. As a former teenage girl with a crush, she NAILS that part. Our main character, Reily the Theater Geek, falls hard and fast and it’s completely relatable. That said, the pages in the book are filled with drama and NOT dungeons. Out of the 250+ pages, maybe 15 of them depict the main characters actually playing an RPG or even thinking about an RPG. So… I’m sorry, but they only covered half the promise.
Now, you may be wondering about those 15 pages and their accuracy. Did this author capture the feeling of nerdy teenagers huddled around a picnic table in the back room trying to act cool and tell a good story? And because I encourage everyone to actually read this book – ironically or otherwise – I will just tell you one example to avoid too many spoilers: At the end of the book, the Forever DM friend is given a chance to run a monologue in an accent. He then affectionately tells Reily that he loved it because “as the DM, he never gets to do accents.”
Let that sink in.
Either the author, or her editors, or SOMEONE involved in this, believes that the DM never gets to use accents. The other examples of inaccuracy were not nearly as egregious, it was mostly just instances where I would have DM’d differently to be fair, but woooooof.
One thing I will say in favor of the book as well, though, was that the side characters felt spot on. There was a LARPing power builder, an outgoing DM, a middle-aged game store owner that, honestly, was just identical to a real-life friend of mine. I can honestly say that the side characters were my favorite part of the book, despite how often they bring up Monty Pithon.
My other biggest detractor to the novel… was the game store itself. The scenery description was essentially a list of introductory, boiler-plate board game titles and the addendum “they were all stacked precariously,” essentially. The first chapter or so is just that: I could almost feel the author begging me to recognize her cred as a nerd and it honestly…. made me very bitterly skeptical for the rest of the book. Which does say volumes for her writing about the characters themselves, because as I stated above, I did end up enjoying the book by the end. It just wasn’t enjoyable for the gimmick: it was only enjoyable for me as YA novel, and frankly that’s NOT the genre a lot of gamers are looking for these days. At least in my crowd (we’re almost all turning 30 this year), we are looking for epic space operas, 40 book mangas, philosophical works, and Brandon Sanderson levels of detailed magic systems. I can’t think of an actual young adult who is interested in D&D, but who would purchase a rom com about it rather than just playing it. So, while I think anyone could have fun with this story, I’m not really sure who the author expected to have fun with it.
Final point: the reason Reily is so against TTRPGs at the start of the book is because she actively blames gamming for her parent’s divorce. I invite all of you to do with that what you will, lol. If you’re interested in me reading more novels like this, please drop a comment below or on our socials!
Till next time! Remember, you are not on this adventure alone!
