M.S. Olney
Jul 28, 2026
Crazy and hilarious adventure
The newest mad cap adventure from Thomas Norford turned out to be one of the strangest and most entertaining reading experiences I’ve had in quite a while. This is not a book that eases you in gently. It throws you headfirst into the madness and expects you to keep up. For the first few chapters or so I genuinely wasn’t sure what was happening, but somewhere within the chaos the novel hooked me completely. Norford has built a world that is wildly original. It’s dense, bizarre and packed with the kind of ideas most authors would probably talk themselves out of before ever putting them on the page. Instead, Norford commits fully to the insanity, and the result is something that feels refreshingly unfiltered. Thomas lets loose and doesn’t holdback at all. The book reminded me of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy smashed together with Rick and Morty, but even that comparison doesn’t quite capture how uniquely chaotic and wildly original this story becomes. Prince Darov is one of the great disasters of modern fantasy protagonists. He’s reckless, selfish, self-destructive and somehow endlessly entertaining to follow. Every decision he makes feels like the wrong one, yet you can’t look away because Norford writes him with such confidence that you become invested in seeing exactly how much worse things can get. He’s not heroic in the conventional sense, but he’s memorable, and that matters far more. One of the unexpected highlights for me was the way Norford handles AI throughout the novel. The AI characters are absolutely hilarious because they feel painfully believable beneath all the absurdity. Rather than presenting hyper-competent machine intelligences, Norford leans into the reality most people already know from dealing with modern technology: AI is often glorified guesswork wrapped in misplaced confidence. The hapless systems scattered throughout the book constantly misunderstand situations, provide catastrophically useless assistance or confidently deliver information that only makes things worse. It’s great satire disguised as comedy and, honestly, one of the funniest running elements in the novel. Beneath all the humour and madness there’s also genuine emotional depth. The relationship between Darov and Hissaq gives the story surprising weight because both characters feel like they exist beyond the immediate needs of the plot. Their interactions ground the novel just enough to stop the chaos becoming empty spectacle. Norford clearly enjoys writing absurd scenarios, but there’s real character work underneath it all. The humour itself will likely divide readers. Some of it is clever and subtle, while other moments are intentionally crude, uncomfortable or completely unhinged. Personally, I respected the fact the book never feels sanitised or overly polished to appeal to everyone. It reads like a story written exactly as the author intended, without compromise, and that gives it a strong identity. It’s a book that perfectly shows the freedom of being an indie author. If I had one criticism, it’s that the world building occasionally threatens to outrun the story itself. There’s a huge amount of information, factions and madness flying around at any given time, and I occasionally felt lost and needed to properly reorient myself a few times. Still, that feels like a minor complaint when weighed against how inventive the overall and enjoyable the experience is. At a time when so much fantasy and science fiction can feel overly safe or algorithmically assembled, this stands out because it dares to be completely and unapologetically weird. It occupies its own chaotic little corner of speculative fiction, and readers willing to embrace the madness will probably have a fantastic time there. Well worth a read!
