Reddit reviews Too Many Curses

Almost finished with "Too Many Curses" by A. Lee Martinez. He's one of the few fantasy authors I can stomach anymore, the other being Terry Pratchett. I guess I got sick of serious high fantasy and can only really do light-hearted comedy fantasy anymore. It's a nice light read with some enjoyable characters but some just outright silly stuff I could do without. Almost feels like an early work of his that got reworked and published.

I'm also kind of in the middle of "Slow Apocalypse" by John Varley. It was getting a little depressing, so I put it down for a while. I should have expected that from the title though. I live in the region the book is set in and work in The Industry, so a lot of the places and things and people he mentions in the opening are spot on. Maybe that's why I've found it so disturbing so far.

I'm also a couple of pages into "The Steel Tsar" by Michael Moorcock. I've been wanting to read this trilogy for years and am so glad they decided to republish it. I picked up the first two, "Warlord of the Air" and "The Land Leviathan", a couple months ago and enjoyed those very much, especially from a 'history of sf' sort of perspective. You can see the fledgling steampunk/alternate reality setting as they were interpreted in the early 1970s.

That's definitely a lot tougher to find, yeah, my suggestion doesn't really fit what you're looking for in that regard. It's easier to find that sort of thing in Japanese light novels, or maybe in comedy stuff. Too Many Curses, for example, has a kobold minion as the protagonist. It's a great read, but definitely a comedy, and I'm not sure if that's what you're looking for either.

I can think of a lot of fantasy heroes that aren't the traditional farmer to hero archetype, but most of them still end up as thieves, fighters, etc. Locke Lamora, Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, that sort of thing. I'll think on it.