Tales from Tabletop

Tales from the Tabletop is the story of a Selene and her search for answers. It takes place in a Dungeons and Dragons style world. One assumes that once she finds those answers, we will the start the search for vengeance, but we will have to wait to find that out. In the meantime, she gathers her companions, building a colorful cast of characters that goes against the grim dark trend you see so often in stories these days. It's a very enjoyable start, and if it pays off, it will be a real page turner. 

Style: 4.5 Stars

D. T. Brennan has a excellent sense of style, and the way he narrates from the perspective of the main character is effective. I'm unsure if we will keep the single perspective in future chapters once other characters are introduced. If they have a weakness, it's that some of the dialogue feels stiff, but overall that is excellent too. 

Grammar: 5 Stars

Above average RR story that I've come across. The author is talented both technically and narratively.

Story: 4.5 Stars

Story is harder to measure at this point as we are still deep into origin story territory, but the author has managed to break up even that often tedious part of the story with several encounters, location changes, and tonal shifts. That can only improve once we get into the action. Action is very limited in the first story arc so far, which unusual in book about adventurers, so we will have to wait and see how it turns out. 

Character: 5 Stars

The strength of this story so far is its character's, specifically its protagonist, Selene. A thief with a heart of gold is hardly a new idea, but the author manages to make her feel like a whole person, and I found her brief flashbacks to be moving. 

If you enjoy D&D or tabletop RPGs in general you’re going to like this story. Its still early on, as of this review there’s only five chapters out, but so far it has all of the makings of an excellent story that I hope sticks around for a long time.

Style: The story is told from the third person prospective from the point of view of the main character so far. It’s paced well and easy to read, I’m not the fastest reader in the world and it only took me two hours to get through the first five chapters.

Story: It’s a fairly standard adventure story so far, bad things happen to protagonist they want answers so they sadly\excitedly leave their home search of said answers. There’s a good amount of plot hooks that make it feel like more is going on in the world than just the protagonist and quest and that she’s most likely going to get sidetracked along the way. The world building is good so far I can tell the author used the forgotten realms setting from D&D but I think he did more than change the names because I’m not sure where this would be set in that world.  

Grammar: The grammar is perfect honestly this could be a published book it’s so good.

Character: The story is from the point of view of Selene\Rieta so far she’s a fun well written character that has a pretty typical background for both an adventure story protagonist and a D&D character. Being young she hasn’t seen much of the world so both her and the reader get to learn about it as we follow her in her adventure. The other character that has been introduced to us as a potential recurring character is Hamish he’s an odd one so far, older and more worldly than the protagonist I have a feeling he'll be the guide of the story.

I’ll be keeping an eye on this one, I love D&D and tend to read most things that are based on it.