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Goblin Hall

I love that cover.  You probably have an instant reaction to it, and you’re probably more than a little off in that reaction.  This is the story of a Count who comes back to his estate after being gone for five years.  He’s a fairly typical Count, just looking to marry off his son to the daughter of a wealthy family and finally getting some time at home after being gone for so long.  Well, his son has met someone else while the Count was away and he plans on marrying this woman.  This woman is a mystery, as are the whereabouts of his son during the daylight hours, so he follows his son, meets this girl and is impressed.  Sadly for him, he had a cup of wine while meeting this woman, didn’t realize she was related to goblins (the fairy tale kind of goblins, not the Tolkien kind), and ends up drugged in a field for a month (although it seemed to him like only a short time had passed), and he misses the wedding.  This causes the Count to get enraged and recruit a posse of mercenaries to take care of these goblins, and it’s here that things start to get awesome.  So, naturally, this is the point where I stop telling you the story.  I will say that from here things go in all sorts of directions you wouldn’t expect, and Rob’s ability to bring out the quiet human elements in a huge battle are impressive.  I particularly enjoyed a moment when the Count meets a friend on the battlefield and begs the guy not to fight him, as he saved the Count’s life in the past, and after the Count gets the better of the guy he drags him off the battlefield and out of harm’s way.  This is also self-contained, so no worries about wondering whether or not Rob is ever going to put out another issue (although he’s prolific enough that he’s more than earned the benefit of the doubt).  Oh, and as for the sample, the rest of the book is s good bit chattier than this page, but I couldn’t resist using the image of the goblin parade.  If you hate all this fantastical I guess you could stay away, but this is really more about how humanity deals with the unknown than anything else, and the results aren’t always pretty.  $6ish