Slayer Bowl

Read Time: 4 Minutes

On paper, Slayer Bowl should have been exactly my kind of thing. Aliens show up, most of humanity gets wiped out when a cosmic bloodsport chooses Earth as their next venue, and the fate of the world rests in the hands of a pizza-slinging underdog. That’s the kind of wild premise I’ll happily throw an Audible credit at. Unfortunately, the reality was more of a miss than a hit.

We meet Sam Wynbrook on his birthday, which starts off with his loser-like existence. He’s stuck working at a knock-off Chuck E. Cheese under a manager straight out of a workplace horror story, with only a stoner coworker (don’t get too attached) and his pet plant, Count Basil, for company.

Then loot boxes start crashing from the sky, aliens announce the Slayer Bowl, and Sam, along with token love interest and damsel to be rescued, Sola, manage to avoid the purges. Sola gets whisked away never to be heard about again, and Sam starts his mission to get her back and avenge humanity.

It sounds like the setup for ridiculous fun, and in places, it is. There are moments of genuine amusement and a few imaginative flourishes that kept me listening. But the humour felt like it was trying too hard. Puns, meme-y riffs, and comic-book sound effects (“schlick,” “glonk,” “zing” etc) are sprinkled everywhere like a Don Martin Mad Magazine strip. Funny on the page, maybe, but their overuse as a humour crutch quickly wore thin.

The bigger problem was the stakes. Sam is supposed to be a loser noob who’s never fought anything more dangerous than a video game boss, but he coasts through the competition as if it’s nothing. Every challenge gets waved aside with some new skill or loophole, a steady stream of what I’ll call deus ex buffs (convenient power-ups that drop into his lap exactly when he needs them), killing any real sense of danger or hack around the rules.

The game is supposed to be controlled by omnipotent aliens, but if Sam can essentially “cheat” his way past everything, where’s the tension? Instead of a desperate fight for survival, it felt like a breeze.

The supporting cast doesn’t help much either. A few sidekicks come and go, with Count Basil being the only real one, gaining sentience and the ability to throw down. Being able to communicate every though, feeling and emotion through a single word was, again, fun to start with but like most of the jokes got a bit overdone. But generally speaking, it’s all Sam, all the way, and without real struggle or growth, that didn’t hold me.

The audiobook is narrated by Luke Daniels, who delivers a good performance for what he’s working with. He throws himself into it, but the fit isn’t quite right. Sam is meant to be a 22-year-old slacker, yet Daniels’ voice has more of a grounded, middle-aged confidence. It’s not bad, per se, just not a match. Not a fault of his (as this is where the story goes) but the main character’s voice needs to shift into 80s action-hero mode, full of one-liners and cheesy bravado. I understand the intent, but after hours of hearing Sam one way, the switch was jarring and pulled me out of the story.

I think before I was a third of the way through, I realised Slayer Bowl wasn’t going to be the kind of book I’d want to keep following. Audible doesn’t list it as part of a series but Amazon does, and after a bit of digging I could find book 2 is in the works. For me, I’ll be leaving it here.

The premise is wild, the energy high, and if you enjoy over-the-top LitRPG chaos with no shortage of puns, you might find it hits the spot. For me, though, the forced humour, easy progression, and lack of stakes made it more frustrating than fun.

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