31 Days of Fic: Day 2

[m_mcgregor]

Title: The Legend of Dunctem Deep
Author: M. McGregor
Genre: Fantasy
Summary: Big. Legendary. Smelly.

It's been said that he is part man, part beast, and wholly inadequate at both. His eyes are small, set closely together, black, and beady. His nose is piggish and overly large. His speech is garbled by the oversized incisors that grow out of his

Comments

[lejo]

Also known as small town Half-Orc makes good.

The gradual introduction into the fantasy setting works- although the sentence construction is natural for the subject matter and setting, it's still odd when you don't quite know what you're getting. Although a title like "The Legend of..." is fair warning.

It defies expectations to have this monstrous creature with a monstrous background become so towering a Hero, which is a nice touch. Though we never have a sense of the man that Dunctem became, even if we can infer some things from his leadership of the Redblades. The world building came quick, with broad swathes being laid in place with single sentences, which is also a neat trick. Dunctem's story also seems to have fallen into archetypal fantasy hero: Savage upbringing, chance encounter, selfish motivations, higher calling. Whether that was intentional or not, I'm not going to guess.

[m_mcgregor]

Any similarities between Groddites and Orcs are purely speculation, I assure you.

Ahem.

Anyway, yeah, this is very much classical fantasy stuff here, with the only real twist being that Dunctem is talked about only via hearsay and that he is not exactly the swashbuckling adventurer nor even the naive young hero of most stories.

[drdm]

Huh. Okay, that's pretty cool.

[mymatedave]

Cool.