Review: Kip the Quick by Clifton Hill

Blurb:

Witty, fast-paced fantasy heist where morality is...debatable.

Kip is a young thief on the hard streets of Tander in the middle of the Sparelands -- a dry, hot piece of hell, hit with frequent and terrible storms. All he wants to do is leave, but first he must save enough to cover fare for the only safe exit in town: the iron wain.

With six months to go, the job of a lifetime lands in his lap: To steal a vial of the Essence -- a piece of myth and legend. He'll do anything to pull it off, but the question is... Will he survive?

Review:

This was certainly… a book. Interesting read, funny in some parts, other parts made me wrinkle my eyebrows. Sure, it is being sold as a fun, fast paced book, and it managed that, to a degree, considering I read it in under an hour. However, there’s too much effort into it being a fun read. Usually, I still maintain the plot and story even after an overlay of some more books. But for “Kip the Quick” though, I’m struggling to recall most of the story. The most clear thing I can remember at all is that the book is supposed to be fun.

If I had to sell this book to close friends or family, I’d give them these two or three sentences:

“Kip wants out of Tander, and to do so, looks for all kinds of jobs. And the one that finds him is the one that is the most troublesome.”,

alongside my customary “Care to know more?” question. However, it doesn’t fully give this novel good coverage, nor does it say everything about it, so I’ll try shedding some more light onto why this is a novel that is a fun read to pass the time if there’s nothing else you have to do.

First off, the plot pacing. Introduction to Kip, then problem, after that the olive branch to fix problem, the problem gets complicated, it gets fixed, story ends. It was a fine, easy to understand line from start to finish, and at some point, I had a bit of fun trying to predict what was going to happen later in the novel. Since the plot pacing was simplistic, it helped read quickly. However, due to the simplistic plot, the information was more difficult to maintain.

Then, the characters, or just Kip since he’s mentioned in the blurb. He’s self centred most of the time, unless it’s his former bullies sister, and his former bully, as well as a street ruffian. But even then, he’s more of a child than an adult, only caring about making it out of the city. He grows a bit of a conscience, and finally decides to become somewhat of a magician consuming the essence later on after circumstances, but besides that, not much growth to be had.

Then, finally, we have the world building. The world building was alright, from what I remember. It was mostly centered within one city, and from there, I could follow along well enough. Tandar was split apart, rich in one area, not rich everywhere else. Besides that, there’s a few names mentioned of faraway places, and evil creatures. 

If I had to gripe about one or two things about “Kip the Quick”, I’d first say the advertising of the book, and then the characters, which are a poor reflection of the aforementioned advertising. If you’ve read this far, and scroll back to the blurb, there are many, many, many mentions of this book being fast paced and fun. Furthermore, not in blurb, but in the submission process, there was a form part that was filled out which basically said the same. After reading it, I felt like it was a bit of an overselling of the actual product, and it was an overdone effort to get people to read it. Going from there to the characters within, I can only surmise that the humour of the characters reflects that of the author, which is fine, a lot of authors do that wonderfully, however, they’ve had both refinement to their comedy and others to check their work. For a second book, it’s good but more effort should’ve gone into testing the fun part of it. A chord has to be struck with the readers in order to bring across comedy - maybe that has changed in the second book, still on the fence whether I should read that one or not.

I’d recommend this book as a quick way to pass the time, and you’re alright with morally grey characters.

As always, if you’ve read until this part, thank you for reading this somewhat mixed review, and I hope I’ve helped you find your next read. Fret not if this does not sound like your cup of tea, for it is just one of many books out there, and this site tries to have a review out for a lot of them. One of which is “Fogbound” by N.J Alexander, and the most recent review is over here, and the other is a fellow reviewer, L.R Schulz’s, new book, “Soul Cage”, with the most recent review being over here.

Wherever you are reading this review, have a good morning, good afternoon, good evening, and good night!