Christiana Ellis has joined the ranks of podcast novelists that have found their way into print with the new edition of her fantasy comedy, Nina Kimberly the Merciless. This marks a personal first for me, however. It’s the first time I’ve read a novel by a podcaster without having listened to the podcast beforehand. An interview she did on a one of the many shows I’ve listened to won me over and convinced me to give the book a shot. Again, I find that the top podcasters in the medium are every bit as talented as any novelist who has come in through the traditional media; I thoroughly enjoyed this book from beginning to end.
Nina Kimberly is the daughter of barbarian Marcus the Merciless, a warrior and conqueror who died ten years ago under less-than-valiant circumstances. Now Nina is trapped in a kindgom where her warriors have grown lazy and listless, and where the moron who has been crowned king thinks he’s going to marry her. Nina plans a quest to rid herself of the insipid King Francis, but his chief advisors throw a monkeywrench in her plans.
Ellis starts this like your basic “fantasy quest” novel. You’ve got your hero (or, in this case, heroine) who begins a long journey in search of a goal, finds travelling companions and adventure along the way, and generally explores your typical fantasy setting. What sets this book apart from a dozen other fantasy novels is Ellis‘s sharp sense of humor. Nina is a highly original protagonist with very unusual goals for this sort of novel. The assorted companions she picks up each seem to carry their own secrets, and the interaction between two of them leaves you spending most of the book wondering which — if either of them — is actually trustworthy. The climax of the story throws several new twists at you, and by the end the shape of the book and the shape of Nina’s world isn’t at all what you expected after the first chapter or two.
Ellis is compared to the likes of Terry Pratchett by several reviewers, and while that’s certainly deserved praise, I think her work reads more like the late Robert Asprin. She’s not quite as screwball as Pratchett is, but instead, gives us a semi-serious setting where the humor is generated by the characters themselves, which isn’t easy to do. She’s crafted a familiar setting and done some very non-familiar things with it, resulting in a book that I enjoyed immensely, and will be recommending to anyone who listens.
Evertime Realms 
People are saying…