Okay, we've had several action figures based on novels, but how about novels based on action figures?
Asteria Silvertongue, a snake in a city of humans, breaks hearts and wins wallets with her vivid scales and skill with cards. When a
valuable artifact from the war that could rewrite her people's history drops into her scaly hands, she finds herself drawn into a web of deception and betrayal that threatens to bring her deepest secrets to light. Can she play her cards right to avoid the mob, keep her tail out of trouble, and perhaps even find a little love before it's too late?
A parasocial relationship is when someone feels a connection to a person they see and maybe even superficially interact with but don't actually know, like one between fans and an actor, or followers and an internet celebrity. And yes, that even happens here on OAFEnet: I think of our readers and regular commenters as friends, all of you, so this isn't a fully detached, objective review of "a book"; this is a review of "a book my friend wrote."
It's also a book written out of spite. Author John Morey was in a discussion about diversity in fantasy stories when someone said they didn't think they could ever fully relate to a character who looked drastically different from themselves; Morey took that as a challenge, setting out to write a story about a snake.
The simple premise is "there was a war between humans and monsters; what happens to the monsters after the peace treaty is signed?" That's Asteria Silvertongue, a random, unimportant member of the snake-people all the world's other races united against. The war ended 900 years ago, and now the snakes are mostly integrated into society... mostly. They're not even second-class citizens, because being second-class
would be a step up. A slither up. One of the interesting world-building things is all the small stuff a race of people with one tail instead of two legs have to do to function in to a world built for humans and humanoids. What does a chair look like? What does a ladder? What does it feel like to have to use all this equipment that clearly wasn't built with you in mind, but if you make any kind of deal about it, everyone will look at you like you're demanding special accommodations? This probably wasn't written as an intentional allegory for people with disabilities, but that's a demographic that would definitely be able to identify to some extent.
Like the blurb said, Asteria is having an average day, playing cards in the market square and being harassed by the cops, when she gets called in by an antiques dealer she knows to provide her insight about
Serpent culture and an old dagger he's found. The city they live in, Saria, used to be the capital of the Serpent empire a millennium ago, before it was handed over to the Alliance of the Free Peoples after the war; every so often ancient bits of that culture are excavated, and since Asteria is fairly knowledgeable about history, it makes her a good person for appraisers to call upon. The dagger proves to be more interesting than expected, so the dealer, Arman Mirza, hires her to be his official resource on the case. There might be more where that came from, so it's now up to Asteria to put together a gang of delvers to explore the ancient ruins.
Anyway, a story can't happen without conflict, so Asteria's delve doesn't go perfectly smoothly, and soon enough other interested parties begin causing trouble. The plot isn't overly complicated - "we have a goal to achieve, these people have a conflicting goal, we need to get past them in order to win" - but the characters and setting are interesting enough to carry it.
Saria is a typical big fantasy city - this could easily be Ptolus or Thune or Ankh-Morpork... you get the idea. Fantasy has no shortage of big, crowded pseudo-medieval-ish cities with cramped alleys, daunting churches and citadels, harsh divisions between rich and poor sections of town, and a populace of semi-diverse fantasy creatures (orcs, goblins, elves, etc.). But rather than being pseudo-medieval-ish Europe,
like most fantasy gives us, this is more pseudo-medieval-ish California, if such a thing existed. Like, food cart vendors have existed in the real world since ancient Rome, but 1) they don't seem to show up in fantasy stories very often, and 2) when they do, they're certainly not selling tacos. Literal tacos, the story literally calls them tacos, not "crunchy fold-bread" or any other silly euphemism, the world of Card Snake has tacos. And ethnic goblin food, which is done as small chunks in distinctive sauces, served with rice, probably eaten with chopsticks... pseudo-medieval-ish Europe never has an equivalent of Chinese food, no matter what species it's attributed to. It's a unique mixing of cultures that makes the setting feel more modern, despite all the other trappings.
Asteria is our main POV character, so through her we learn about the Serpent society and how it fits into the modern world.
We learn about their twin gods, and how the church's symbolism has changed over the years (though for the life of me, I cannot figure out what the statue in the temple is supposed to look like; is it a loop? A freestanding loop, like in Stargate?) Through her we learn about her culture's interesting funerary rites and things as mundane as what personal hygiene looks like when you slither everywhere instead of walking.
(Though on a related note: the book is generally quite good at avoiding modern things that would have been era-inappropriate; for instance, when one character mentions a treadmill, Asteria actually takes a moment to think about the real-life original version, a wheel prisoners climbed as punishment. Great catch, that. But then later in the book her home just has hot running water on tap? Would that really have been around then?)
Through her we also get to see
the prejudices the Serpent race faces, both negative ("rat-eater" is the go-to slur for them, even "nice" people call them Snakes rather than their preferred term) and positive (her neighbor seems to be some kind of extreme snakeaboo who thinks of their culture as an exotic oddity, a costume to dress her snake servant in). Meanwhile, Asteria is just a normal person trying to live her normal life.
At times, the writing is very "Terry Pratchett." Consider, if you will, the introduction of Asteria's acquaintance on the police force: "Sergeant Warner Valenti looked like the kind of person who would be a City Guard sergeant named Warner Valenti." You've gotta love a book that's
not afraid to be funny! Or naming the royal paladin "Lanse Pike," and realizing that the most accurate way for any characters who meet him to react is to laugh at it. The silliness never goes overboard, though. This isn't a comedy novel, it just naturally has funny parts. Like real life! And it manages to avoid some typical fantasy tropes, as with the orc Jaroc Jamarn - he's not quite a philosopher or anything, but neither is he just dumb muscle. As an orc, he's big, but he also points out that he comes from a family of safecrackers, not leg-breakers. So that's something unexpected, isn't it?
It's also a sign of good writing when the foreshadowing can be picked up on the first go-through, not just on subsequent rereadings. My favorite was when Asteria was talking to a character who was contractually obligated to not tell her something; the writing makes it clear she's trying to tell her, without actually telling her, but Asteria just isn't getting the hint. Of course, later there's a whole segment with that character that feels like it should have been a deleted scene, or bonus material, because I didn't get the hint that it was going to be important later, so maybe I shouldn't give Asteria too hard a time?
One thing that took a long time to sit right with me was the romance (one of them, anyway, the other progressed just fine). Asteria begins a relationship in the book, but it went from nothing to everything in like half a page; we're told she likes him, repeatedly, but it takes a long time for it to actually feel like she likes him. I kept expecting her to admit she was only doing the whole date night to manipulate him into helping her. Eventually we learn that she apparently has a history of moving ridiculously fast, which does help make it more believable, but only in retrospect.
There are a lot of times when the same thing gets repeated over and over in quick succession. It seems to be an effort to make sure the new ideas "click" with the reader, bit it does stand out. When you repeat the same thing many times in a short section, it may be memorable but it can also stick out awkwardly. If you want people to know something about the world, saying it a few times can help solidify the idea, but it can also be a bit clumsy. [okay, quit that --ed.] For instance, when we're first told about the gods Aftos and Afti, it reiterates so many times in a short span that they're entwined snakes, entwined snakes, entwined snakes. Or the running joke about everybody recognizing Lanse as a paladin even when he's out of uniform: it's good, but soon we're not meeting any new characters, so in order for it to count as a running joke it has to be dumped on us a bunch of times all at once, and then it never comes back for a final hit. I think Morey recognized this was a problem, though, because the same style of joke comes back one more time right at the end of the book, and this time it's played off like a joke - just ask the champion fencer.
The book could also have used at least one more editing pass. There are a couple times when the wrong word was used, but in a way spellcheck wouldn't catch. Calling something a "dig sight." Giving someone a "war welcome." Holding a rope "taught." Calling Warner "Warned."
Minor things like that. (Plus at least one that spellcheck would have caught, so I don't know what to say about that one.) There are times when there missing words in a sentence, or or repeated words. Sometimes there will be pronoun confusion, like the difference between "your face" and "their face." At least one time near the end of the book you can tell a bit was rewritten at some point, and now the subject/verb agreement is wonky. Would any of these ruin your enjoyment? No, of course not, I just knew I'd be reviewing this book, so I kept notes. You'll forget them by the next page.
I got a physical copy because I don't have an e-reader, and there were some issues that clearly come from this being a self-published book with that, too. Awkward kerning, page breaks coming in weird places... like, if you have a checklist presented as a graphic element, and it runs over the page break so most of the list is on one page and the final item is on the next, you need to adjust your layout so that doesn't happen. Just tighten up the leading a little bit to get that final line on the same page. Or, in the opposite case, spread out the leading so you don't end up with a section break, and the number introducing the next section, as the final thing on one page before moving to the next, because it will absolutely get overlooked just like the page numbers do, and the resultant scene shift will be distracting until you look back down to the page before and notice the number. Companies that format books for a living would know better and catch these things.
And all that's great, but what does it have to do with toys? We promised you toys! Well, the genesis of this book came about during the pandemic lockdowns. Morey, having nothing to do and nowhere to go, started
playing around with Boss Fight Studio's Vitruvian HACKS gorgons, all the figures based on different types of snakes, and tried giving them various personalities based just on how they look. Starting with the Anakritis Gorgon, he gave her some Western-style accessories, and decided she looked more sassy than sinister. Okay, so if she looks sassy, why is that? Who is she? What world does she live in where being this type of person would make sense for her? So yeah, ultimately, without those action figures and without the need to prove someone wrong, this book wouldn't exist.
And that would be a shame, because even with all the problems we mentioned, this is still a good story. Considering how central card-playing is to Asteria's life, it might have been nice if there'd been some way to make the actual plot structure reflect cardgames, tying the theme in even metatextually, but that's an easy thing to wish for when I'm not the one who would have to write it, or even figure out what the heck it would mean. [putting them all on motorcycles --ed.] But it does that thing all really enjoyable books do, where as you near the end, the faster and faster you want to read it. So if you want to see a new fantasy setting, with undeniable action figure origins, give the book a try. And if you like it, you can always get the Vitruzian HACKS figures to customize your own Asteria.
-- 09/26/25
Do you also want a parasocial relationship? Why do you think we keep telling you to go to our message board, the Loafing Lounge.
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