Title: Mob Lodge
Author: Krrish Anand
Publisher: Self-Published
Publication Date: April 15, 2025
Genres: Fantasy, LGBTQ+, Contemporary
Length: 160 pages
Source: I received a free copy from the author.
Rating: 5 Stars
Blurb:
The world has ended, but people still have to survive. Enter Grim – an unapologetically nihilist, asexual, transmasc z-ennial with the mouth of a sailor and the visual acuity of a naked mole rat – and his adolescent naturalist grandson, Bug. When survival is just too damn boring, Grim recalls life from before the nukes dropped; which, he asserts, was much, much harder back then.
Content Warning: Murder and death.
Review:
Heroes come in all shapes and sizes.
I adored the character development in this piece, but I can’t go into much detail about it without giving away some fantastic plot twists. Honestly, this was one of the biggest reasons why I chose a five star rating. There was plenty of space left for nuance, and characters who behaved one way in the game were often presented quite differently in this novel which gave this reader the chance to see that boxy, flat world from perspectives I hadn’t spent much time pondering in the past as well as helped to explain why they behaved the way they did once the heavier action elements of the storyline kicked in. The various layers of meaning in their behaviour kept my attention levels high from beginning to end and made me want to go start a new world and build a house in it again. If only I could bring some of these characters with me into my world!
Death in the Minecraft universe isn’t handled the same way as it would be in our world. This was a nice Easter egg for fans of the game who have already had their character die in it, but I don’t want to provide too many spoilers for anyone who isn’t already familiar with this feature. What I can say is that this feature provided plenty of opportunities for the characters to grow and change as individuals on their quest. I smiled and nodded along as they faced insurmountable odds and did everything they could to help each other along the way.
The plot twists were exciting and numerous. Just like while playing the game, I would think I knew what would happen next only to be surprised by something I didn’t see coming. This is the kind of writing style that makes me want to come back for more, especially for a genre like fantasy that I’ve read so extensively. It’s not always easy to find fresh spins to put on common tropes, but the author did a good job here of both meeting this reader’s expectations of how the storyline would go and delighting me with creative applications of the sorts of conflicts, characters, and settings I knew I was almost certainly going to read about.
I’d strongly recommend playing Minecraft before reading this book as the narrator assumes their audience already knows all about the lore of this world.
Mob Lodge was wildly imaginative and made me want to play Minecraft again!