Think you have it rough? Try being King Olive, deposed by his somewhat addled younger brother, Boonder, and imprisoned by the fearful Boneman, left to rot far from home. Or try being young Sam Hatcher, who, upon being rejected by the Royal Guard, is sent to apprentice under the unpredictable, roguish, unorthodox Rigby Skeet, who serves the Guard as a special unit of one. Heck, try being Rigby Skeet, Sword for Hire, unwanted by the Guard and bored out of his mind most of the time. If you really want things put in perspective, put yourself in the shoes of the dead guy who falls into Skeet’s office, three arrows protruding from his back. For it’s that incident which sends Sam and Rigby on a whirlwind adventure to rescue the missing king (presumed dead all these months). All they have to do is survive a sorcerer, overcome many obstacles best left to the imagination, infiltrate the Boneman’s prison and make off with its most heavily guarded prisoner, before returning home to deal with King Boonder. And after all that, who’ll get the girl?

Swords for Hire is a Princess Bride-like look at those epic fantasy quests that dominate the bookshelves. Stripped down to the bare essentials, it’s streamlined, moving from point to point with a self-aware, wry efficiency. Where some authors might take three, five, even ten books to get to the point, Allen manages to convey a sense of progression and completion in one short one. Admittedly, it would have been great to see the story expanded, some of the things hinted at actually explored, but that would have defied the point of this: Swords for Hire is every epic fantasy, boiled down into one quick-read comedy. It’s sure to appeal to younger readers, and fans of comic fantasy.