On the HahaFiction shelf

Jester

by Tim Carter

Audiobook available · 9 hr 3 min

Shelly cleans the latrines at Castle Halfsock, where the rulers are ignoring an approaching undead army. A murder draws the goblin into court intrigue, and saving his home means influencing people who barely consider him worth noticing.

Fantasy Mystery Dry wit Satire

From the author’s blurb

“In a realm ruled by idiots, their only hope is the Fool.”

Read the full description at Tim Carter author description

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What makes it funny?

The jester is frightened and trying to survive. Shelly's wry account supplies the jokes, particularly when he observes humans who assume that their power makes them superior to the goblin cleaning up after them.

The comedy at work

Shelly has useful ideas and almost no authority. He has to manage powerful, incompetent people without letting them realize who is doing the thinking, turning court politics into an exercise in concealed persuasion.

Try this if…

Political maneuvering carries much of the story. A sharp first-person narrator and an interest in the people left beneath a fantasy kingdom's social ladder are useful reasons to consider it.

Good to know

Slavery, racism and class prejudice have consequences here, and the latrine work is unpleasantly described. Friendship and warmth develop amid those conditions; the setting includes grim material alongside the jokes.