Showing results for "Jim C Hines" in Humorous

If you think it’s hard being a hobgoblin or a human, try living a goblin’s life for a while. In fact, try imagining what it’s like to be the runtiest goblin in the caves, the lone worshiper of a god who’s been forgotten for a good reason, and the target everyone points to at the first hint of trouble. Try picturing yourself as Jig Dragonslayer, and see how you like it....

Jig the goblin was the runtiest member of an admittedly puny race. Jig was scrawny, so nearsighted as to be almost blind, and had such a poor self-image that when he chose a god to worship, it was one of the forgotten ones - after all, what other sort of god would have him as worshiper? He also had a cowardly fire-spider for a pet, a creature that was likely to set your hair on fire if it got into a panic. Made to stand tunnel watch by the goblin bullies who'd been assigned the job, it was just Jig's luck to be taken captive by a group of adventurers.

They call him Jig Dragonslayer - and who is he to deny a legend. After all, common sense - something in very short supply among goblins - has a lot to do with Jig's continued existence. Though he's been captured by adventures and dragged unwillingly along on their foolish quest, he's survived both the Necromancer and the Dragon. If people want to insist he's a hero, he isn't going to fight about it. But the trouble with being labeled a hero is that everyone expects you to keep doing heroic things.

Isaac Vainio is a Libriomancer, a member of the secret organization founded five centuries ago by Johannes Gutenberg. Libriomancers are gifted with the ability to magically reach into books and draw forth objects. When Isaac is attacked by vampires that leaked from the pages of books into our world, he barely manages to escape. To his horror he discovers that vampires have been attacking other magic-users as well, and Gutenberg has been kidnapped.

Five hundred years ago, Johannes Gutenberg discovered the art of libriomancy, allowing him to reach into books to create things from their pages. Libriomancer Isaac Vainio is part of Die Zwelf Portenre, better known as the Porters, the organization founded by Gutenberg to protect the world from magical threats. Isaac is called in to investigate the killing of a wendigo, along with Porter psychiatrist Nidhi Shah and their dryad bodyguard and lover, Lena Greenwood. But their plan could unleash a far darker evil....

For 500 years, the Porters have concealed the existence of magic from the world. Now, old enemies have revealed the Porters' secrets, and an even greater threat lurks in the shadows. The would-be queen Meridiana, banished for a thousand years, has returned in the body of a girl named Jeneta Aboderin. She seeks an artifact created by Pope Sylvester II, a bronze prison that would grant her the power to command an army of the dead.

When Isaac Vainio helped to reveal magic to the world, he dreamed of a utopian future, a new millennium of magical prosperity. One year later, things aren't going quite as he'd hoped. An organization known as Vanguard, made up of magical creatures and ex-Porters, wants open war with the mundane world. Isaac's own government is incarcerating "potential supernatural enemies" in prisons and internment camps. And Isaac finds himself targeted by all sides.