Read Time: 2 Minutes
Stuff and Nonsense (Threadbare #1), written by Andrew Seiple, is a tale of a little toy golem trying to be the best teddy bear friend to his little girl that he can be. This entirely charming innocent teddy bear golem starts life with underdeveloped int stats but better than average wisdom. He learns quickly and his stats climb up unnoticed by his creator or almost anyone around him.
He befriends a little girl, Ceila, the daughter of his creator, and thus begins this tale filled with lots of teddy toddling about, cuddles, monsters, dungeons, and crazy cat lady bosses. Threadbare, the hero of the story, mostly ranks up through sheer dumb luck. Picking up jobs and skills, and he stumbles into them.
Celia, Threadbare’s little girl, lived a sheltered life her whole existence, so when given the chance, she jumps at a life of adventure. Lots of hints along the way to a larger arc playing out. Together with a band of kids she meets through her mentor, Celia’s skills also tick up nicely.
An interesting backstory to the world, where the history of how status screens, jobs, skills, level-ups etc all came be. Touched on but never revisited, so I’m assuming there is more of this to come in future books.
Being in the genre LitRPG, there was a lot of stats being read out. Mostly though, not too much to interrupt the flow. Typically along the lines of “xx stat plus n” with the occasional burst of multiples when the story warranted it.
The language took me a little by surprise. In no way am I averse to rude words, but they did feel out of place when they first started being dropped. Not by Threadbare of course, but the others. Nothing that put me off, just not something I was expecting with all the cuteness getting about.
Narration by Tim Gerard Reynolds was superb. I’ve not had the pleasure of listening to his voice before, but he was very easy to listen to. I’ll be checking out his back catalogue of books in the near future to see what else he’s done. Top-notch production quality, as expected.
All up, an adorable tale of a teddy bear golem making his way in the world. I’ll definitely be continuing with this series.
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