I’ve been a fan of Alexander Wales for ages since his fanfiction days. He dropped off my radar for a bit but since I finished the grimdark epic Worth the Candle I’ve been catching up on his other works. From what I understand he set out to write this less serious piece to decompress. There are adventurers and dungeon delving in it but as he puts it, this is mostly meant to be slice-of-life. It’s set in a pleasant, near utopia of a world and one of the main themes is that some characters feel that their world is so safe and so well understood that there are no mysteries and places to discover left. Anyway, Wales delivers exactly what he promised here. It’s not really about the worldbuilding or grand plots but about getting to know and fall in love with the cast of characters. It’s great comfort food and I really enjoyed it.

The unnamed world this story is set in is divided into hexes and each hex contains a dungeon. Most of the world is peaceful and prosperous. Almost all accidents can be undone by chrononauts who manipulate time. But those craving excitement can venture into the dungeons to fight monsters and take out magical items, known entads, as spoils. Alfric is a serious young man who has always wanted to be a dungeoneer and has trained hard for it. But when his party is stolen from him by his ex-girlfriend, he has to form a new party from scratch by gathering people in the small town of Pucklechurch. They include a sorceror who has been banned from the local church for casting a fireball, a bard who works for barely more than room and board at the local tavern, a cleric who is on the outs with her church and a hunter who lives out in the woods by herself. To Alfric’s own surprise, not only does this party work, more or less, but they become such good friends that their friendship soon starts becoming more important than the dungeoneering. There is some action and Wales’ worldbuilding is always satisfying to read, but the main draw of this story is exactly what it says on the tin, enjoying day-to-day life with friends that you care about.

The world described here marks quite a change after the deathworld of Worth the Candle. When the characters visit an entad shop for example, magical weapons are quite common and cheap simply because there’s not much use for them outside of the dungeons. This little detail serves to showcase both how safe this world is and how Wales remains meticulous at worldbuilding, thinking through the consequences of every design decision. There are major plotlines and the characters do eventually get involved in nation-wide affairs, but for the most part, this is a very low stakes story. Instead the focus in on interpersonal problems, the characters’ personal demons and their romantic entanglements. Even so, it’s immensely satisfying to read about day-to-day life in what is in effect a post-scarcity society brought about by easy access to magic. People still need to work to better their lot in life but the community provides enough support to ensure that no one goes hungry while healing is free and covers almost all ailments. Meanwhile the truly rich have access to magics that allow them to travel across the world in an instant, transform their bodies as they please or even create pocket worlds of their own. Stories set in utopias are rare and even if the one here isn’t quite a perfect, it’s great to have such an in-depth look at what it might feel like to live in one.

Wales claims that he aimed for a ratio of about 10% dungeoneering to 90% slice-of-life and that sounds just about right. There still are fights against a crazily diverse set of monsters and struggles against environmental hazards inside the dungeons. But there are many more chapters of meal times, with detailed descriptions of the dishes cooked and eaten, of touristic visits to cities and other places of interest, of the party members having fun figuring out the powers of the entads they pick up, of meeting and getting to know friends and family members and so on. Most importantly, this is a story about young people working out who they are and what they want out of life, making friends, forming romantic entanglements and dealing with their emotional baggage. The real magic is in Wales’ ability to create a cast of characters that you really care for and having them play off of each other. It’s so much fun to have the dutiful and by-the-book Alfric interact with the mercurial sorceress Mizuki who disdains plans and likes to make friends with everyone, or watch Isra who grew up mostly by herself in the woods take to fashion or make-up. There’s nothing simple in their characterizations and internal psychologies at all, which elevates this above the usual young adult fare in my eyes.

This series is definitively finished so there’s no worries about this being an open-ended ongoing story. The stopping point leaves each of the main characters in a comfortable place while giving you a decent idea of how their future lives will be. As this series is more about the characters than the world itself, it does leave many questions about the setting unanswered. We never get to meet one of the Editors who seem to control the world’s settings, we never actually visit Isra’s homeland even if it gets discussed a lot and we don’t get to see very much of the nonhuman sapients who lives in this world. It would be fun to revisit this world again but I doubt that’ll ever happen as Wales created it for a specific purpose and that has already been fulfilled. In any case, on top of the fluffy friendship elements, there is still more than enough of the crunchy worldbuilding and obsessive munchkinry that fans of the author have become accustomed to. I loved it as a fun distraction from more serious fare and became more emotionally engaged with the characters than I’d expected.