I just finished ROLL OVER AND DIE: I Will Fight for an Ordinary Life with My Love and Cursed Sword!, Vol. 1 written by kiki, illustrated by kinta, out now from Seven Seas. Tl;dr  It was a fast read and overall, a good one. I will certainly read the next volume.

Flum Apricot was chosen young to be legendary warrior, but her “reversal” skill means her stats are always at 0. To make herself more useful, she provides food and backup to the team, but her cheerfulness and friendship with the other members makes wannabee team-leader Jean angry, so he has her snatched, branded and sold as a slave. Flum escapes with the help of her power and a cursed sword. along with the slave girl she recuses, Milkit. Together they set out to become adventurers to pay the bills. They find derision and antagonism at the Adventurer’s Guild, but together they overcome all the very bad odds against their survival and end up thriving.

Reading this brought up a lot of comparisons, as I have, over my years of reading obsessively, read an enormous number of books.  First, the opening premise brought to mind Piers Anthony’s Xanth series, in which protagonist Bink had a similarly extremely powerful and even more extremely annoying magical skill. And, indeed, the beginning seems a little like Xanth, if the focus had been on violent dismemberment and the panty shot obsession was just a little side gig. Because this book is heavy on the grotesque violence.

Which brings me to the second comparison. As you may know, I am fully all-in on the Locked Tomb fandom and obsessive about Tamsyn Muir’s Gideon the Ninth and Harrow the Ninth. So much so that I have actually considered making a Sixth House costume (which is, coincidentally exactly what I wear anyway, with a cloak and few more pens and a caliper in the pockets. It’s even the right color. ^_^ Find your own House here, but I’ve known I was Sixth since the first page. ^_^) In many ways, ROLL OVER AND DIE feels like a 8-bit freeware version of Gideon.

Which is not to say that it is a bad book, even though it might be pushing it to say that it is “Good.” It is heavy on the set-ups of violence against the persons involved who are mostly, but not exclusively, women. Those setups linger just long enough to be triggering if scenes of physical torture, dismemberment, mangling, rape and more general rapaciousness bother you – as they should. The premise makes it completely possible to kill your brain cells reading that and not feel much. In that, I think the author does the readership a disservice. It is one of my two main complaints about this book.

On the good side, the sexist and classist violence and disrespect the women face will not be the main plot, as it was in JK Haru is a Sex Worker in Another World. Equally in the positive column is that the women involved are team-building, in much the same way they do in Sexiled. The characters are relatively likable, and they work well together. The Yuri…well, we’ll get there…

The primary objection I have is that I am simply not okay with “men are vile sexist shitbags to women” as a world-building handwave. Yeah, we get it. Actually, we live it. We don’t need it described to us. 1 out of 5 women have been raped or experienced attempted rape, and 1 in 38 men. That means you absolutely, positively know someone who has been raped. Think of how many people you know. That’s a lot of sexual assault.  I can completely understand that conflict drives growth, and violence against women, and use of people as property are both low-hanging fruit for conflict, (and yes, rape and violence sure can be legit forms of fantasy) but without nuanced writing, this is just torture porn and I am not really here for it. On the positive side, many of the most egregiously vile scenes are cut short, and only the blatantly violent ones are left to play out. Still may not be to your taste, because it is pretty grimdark overall.

Again, on the positive side, not all men in this book are dirtbags. Flum and Apricot receive a lot of kindness from some of the men in the story and, as it goes on, I think there’ll be a balance, but a balance of extremes, on the one hand rapacious dirtbags and the other exceedingly kind and generous men. I hope that the men get to be more fleshed out as, so far at least, the female characters are.

So, let’s talk about the Yuri. Flum and Milkit definitely grow closer, slowly and pretty carefully. The relationship is just beginning to develop as the final scenes play out. It’s played for a very gentle kind of service at the end, but I can’t really complain. Milkit’s backstory precludes anything just happening spontaneously and, thankfully, it’s not handled in a hamfisted manner.

The art for once is pretty good, although we’re told repeatedly that Flum is dressed in sensible clothing and the art never once reflects that, which just pisses me off. Women look good in pants and boots, folks. Stop with the floofy dresses and bloomer-style shorts. At least Milkit’s stupid costume was given a story, even if it’s one of the least believable choices in the books. ^_^;

Ratings:

Art – 7
Story – 7 Grim and grotesque, but not bad
Characters – 8
Service – Mostly of the gross kind, with a bit here and there of dressing and undressing. The Yuri service is absurdly gentle as it has to be to work
Yuri – 4, but no doubt it will climb

Overall – 8

But Erica – you ought to be saying right now – you said that you had two complaints and you only discussed one. What’s the other main complaint?”

I look at you, smiling and say: Well, Milkit is a terrible, awful name, isn’t it? It’s just so bovine and miserable. But that’s not the problem. The main complaint is that Flum Apricot is the most enraging awful protagonist name ever. Flum? FLUM?!? Half my brain was screaming that “It *clearly ought to be Plum, not Flum!” and the other half was screaming “Yo, not better!” in an endless loop.

Horrible, horrible naming. Absolutely ugh-making. Flum Apricot. Enraging. I’m not blaming anyone but it set my brain on fire. ^_^

I genuinely enjoyed kiki’s author’s note and the dithering about the word count. I purchased this digitally on Bookwalker Global and was pretty pleased with the formatting, with loads of white space which made it easier to read.

Here are my pullquote suggestions for this book:

“When life gives fated hero Flum lemons, she picks up a cursed sword and makes *^$!ing lemonade.”

“Legendary warrior Flum and ex-slave Milkit are shining lights in the grimdark.”

“Roll Over and Die is a Funhouse Dark Ride of a novel; an energetic mashup of fantasy, horror and Yuri.”