Terrance Denby takes an unusual route to work one day and finds himself in an enchanted forest where winged fairies give him a sword and tell him, "Your journey is about to begin. Learn to use this sword or perish."
Terrance doesn't have time to go on a magical quest: he's late for his job as a computer programmer. But when he gets to work, he suddenly notices things he hadn't seen before. Like the fact that his boss is a demon with scaly skin, horns, and bloodstained fangs. Or that an "unnamed thing below" feasts on human victims in an arena filled with people absorbed in their cell phones.
Set up on a blind date with a perky blonde named Shannon, Terrance finds that she is wearing a full suit of armor complete with a helmet and sword. "I'm a Sister of Torment," she explains. "We're a group of women who serve the Darkness." Terrance can't help wondering how such a nice, attractive girl ended up beheading people with an ax.
But their budding romance is complicated when Terrance is recruited by The Infinite, a shadowy group that is at war with the Sisters of Torment and their demonic overlords. Will Terrance join them? Or will he try to return to his old life and forget the evidence of his now-awakened senses? Faeries, elves, warriors, mermaids, and his dark-souled girlfriend will help him decide.
If JRR Tolkien and Mike Judge got drunk and wrote a book together with the sole purpose of making it epix\c, it might be Sidequest. With cleverly written dialog and dry humor set against a fantastical, apocalyptic backdrop, Sidequest reads like an episode of Silicon Valley that cross bred with Lord of the Rings.
A hilarious, fun and exciting ride, Sidequest possesses a wry hilarity, lovable characters and a plot that starts mundane and turns gargantuan in its scope.
I'm not one who is into typically geeky things, but I geeked out when I read Sidequest. It possesses a love for and sense of humor about its subject matter reminiscent of Ready Player One.
It's like Office Space meets World of Warcraft, and it's a total blast.
It's a thrill to find a book that both makes you laugh out loud and grips you with its pacing. Sidequest doesn't let up and it takes you on a sprawling adventure from the office of guy who writes computer code to the apocalypse. Fleming tells a tale that is witty, out of its mind while at the same time deep. There is a meaning behind the madness and it is a blast to watch it unravel.
-Ethan Nicolle (Axe Cop, Bearmageddon)
"Starts off in a world much like our own, where the woman in HR sets you up for a date with a demon slayer, and the boss holds human sacrifices in the basement. And then it gets weird."
-- Michael Z. Williamson
"Frank Fleming's writing is a delight and kept me sane through some pretty dark times. Read. Enjoy."
Sarah Hoyt
