Review: The Crew by Sadir S. Samir

Blurb:

THIS AIN'T A JOB FOR THE GOOD GUYS

Varcade fled to the deserts of Harrah to escape his past as an Educator, a member of an order of zealot warrior-monks that aims to shape the world according to their sacred Teachings by force. Varcade makes his living as a reckless sword-for-hire, caring only about himself, until his self-centered lifestyle is turned on its head when he is contracted to recruit a misfit team of unruly assassins and take out the mighty Bone Lord of Akrab.

But the Bone Lord is aware of the plot and sends her band of Dusters to stop them; individuals who have gained bizarre and lethal magical powers by snorting the pulverised bones of dead gods. Hunted by Educators and Dusters in a city-state where an escalating conflict between the human and demon population threatens to boil over in a civil war, will Varcade and his ragtag crew save Akrab from the cruel Bone Lord, or will they make things even worse?

Review:

Was reading a book last night and looked around Social Media for a bit, when something caught my eye. A book. A book called “The Crew”. Noticed that it was on Kindle Unlimited, so I borrowed it from there, went to sleep and finished the aforementioned book. Then, once I was done with that book, I grabbed my iPad and sat down to read this book by Sadir S. Samir. A few hours and several laughs later, and I set my iPad down to digest what I just read. Now, I had to digest what I read not because it was sad. No, quite the opposite. Time flies reading this comedy filled novel and the fact that it ends the way it did… Sadir, Mr. Samir, I ask for a sequel to this book just to see where this world will go.

First off, the fun stuff that made “The Crew” an absolute blast to read through.

Varcade and Co. are an absolute gem of comedy, working in a three part team of one serious person and two comics, while still remaining the air of “professional” sellswords

Then, we have Varcade himself. He’s more than likely being carefree and comedic as a way to not think about his past, yet at the same time, he feels regret for it as well, and this can be seen when he decides to go on the mission to Akrab after initially turning down the mission offer.

I understand comedy is a hit or miss thing, yet here Varcade is, basically being a giant child, and it works amazingly. He has perfected the clown act while also keeping an air of seriousness about him when he’s in the field that makes every scene with him in it something hilarious, even when it is supposed to be serious (the toad incident is one that immediately comes to mind). 

Now, let’s look at the plotting. It’s a straightforward one, at first. And then it goes and becomes a complicated, yet simple one. Varcade gets hired to go murder the Bone Lord of Akrab, and when they catch wind of it, they retaliate, and so on and so forth. But that twist in the plot, while that reveal to that twist was kind of overshadowed by the “BABY ARM” part, it still caused me to do a double take.

And the magic system, while not being anything too spectacular, made me chuckle at first at the fact that the two magic options if you weren’t born a mage were being dragged to the Educators temple or snorting drugs. After that chuckle, I sat and looked at the white powder the Dusters are snorting, then looked at Dog Man, and contemplated the deep implications of having an addictive magic system. And after doing so, came to the conclusion of “More magic system = consequences for your actions like this please”. 

I mentioned Educators and a temple in the last paragraph and they are mentioned in the blurb for the book at the very beginning. “What are Educators?”, is your most likely question. My answer to that most likely question is: 

They are the saintly missionaries who preach no harm to be done to innocents and in order to teach that lesson, use harm. Although it is brutal and uncomfortable to watch that unfold, the irony of their message isn’t lost on us that they are preaching pacifist ways while being extremely un-pacifist with how they preach it. Also, they have magical saints backing up their operation, so they're basically paladins with enormous speed upgrades.

As for the magical drugs, those are ground up bones of dead people that get very addicting, very quickly. So, the takeaway from that part of the magic system is… “Don’t do drugs!”

Lastly, I would like to get to how well the plot pulled off the divide of cultures in this book. Akrab is a city with two sides, demons and humans. Lately however, the Bone Lord of Akrab has been cracking down on the demons and so, the tensions flare…

That’s all I can say about that city because if I say more, half the shenanigans in the middle of the book would be revealed. Needless to say, I loved how the tension was created and then subsequently pulled off in that city, regardless of the comedy Varcade dragged in.

Now to what wasn’t really going for me reading this book.

One thing. One small thing irked me and it might work for you. The third person narrator jumps in every once and a while to add a quip about something a character was doing. Although a bit funny, it pulled me from what was happening on the pages and it took me a few minutes to jump back in. Not that much of an issue though, since it only happens once or twice throughout the whole novel. 

If you have made it this far in the review, thank you for reading it and I hope I’ve helped move you in the right direction towards your next read. If not, no worries. We here at the SFF Insiders team have a lot of other reviews that might also help you find the next book for you.

As always, have a good morning, good afternoon, good evening or good night, whenever and wherever you are when you picked this review up.