The Wandering Inn – Pirateaba

How delightful!

This book collects the first part of a web novel posted to wanderinginn.com. I gather from other reviews that most reviewers read the (free) online web novel and then found the first part collected in an ebook. (It’s a good size. Volume 1 is over a thousand ‘pages’ long, and the web novel is apparently on volume 5.) The consensus of the aforementioned reviews was that the first few chapters are slow - The protagonist finds herself in another world, finds an abandoned inn, tries to cope - and then the novel strengthens. The consensus is correct on both counts.

The novel could have been generic: Two young women from Earth finds themselves on an RPG-style world with monsters and adventurers and magic. What makes it different, what makes it work, is that the protagonists have to live in that world. This isn’t a book about Erin Solstice discovering a knack for magic and combat and becoming and adventurer. It’s a book about Erin Solstice trying to make a go of an Inn, and having to figure out how to buy butter and flour from beings who don’t care much for Humans. This isn’t a book about Ryoka Griffin parlaying her talents into high-level Skills. It’s a book about Ryoka Griffin making a living as a Runner (messenger/courier) despite having no Skills. Because the main characters don’t buy into the tropes of the genre, it keeps being a story about real people.