Fantasy Cereal: Breakfast of Champions includes two separate
stories: Alaric Swifthand and Reflections of a Recovering
Servant. Both of these stories are based upon ongoing serials written by the author as a continuing story on an online role-playing game web site. These entertaining stories were meant to encourage online gamers to regularly return to the site to catch up the next adventurous installment. Alaric Swifthand relays the
adventures of Alaric Swifthand. Alaric is a King''s guard turned adventurer by a strange twist of fate, or perhaps more aptly by several strange twists of fate and a bit of magic. Though just an average man, Alaric seems to attract trouble, adventure, and rather unique companions. Moreover, he has a wry sense of humor that surfaces at just the right times, often stating exactly what the reader is thinking. The story of Alaric Swifthand contains several of Alaric''s adventures, or rather a sequence of challenging events leading to an adventure. This series of energetic tales leads the reader through fantastic hilarious adventures with nobles, assassins, spirits, giants, ratmen, magic weapons, and mages. The reader can''t help but be drawn into the story and be completely entertained by the banter and sheer hilarity of Alarcic''s
situations. I can''t wait to read about Alaric''s next
Adventure. Reflections of a Recovering Servant is the story of Straac, a servant to Lord Melinor. Straac is anything but the hero type. He''s not strong, motivated, courageous, or particularly intelligent. In fact, Straac is quite content to serve Lord Melinor as a servant and live his life without any dangerous adventures or self-discovery journeys. Fate had a different future in mind for Straac. As with Alaric Swifthand, Reflections of a Recovering Servant contains a series of adventures that lead to one central adventure. Many of these situations drip with irony. Others contain a little mystery and intrigue. All are completely entertaining. Also as with the previous story, the cast of characters is unique, distinctly original, and adds originality to the already creative story line. The best thing about these characters, however, is that these characters are human with all of the flaws of real humans. This aspect allows the reader to connect with the characters of the
book even when the situations are fantastical. I look forward to more adventures about Straac and his friends.