Kim's Reviews > The Dungeoneers

“He glanced helplessly at Ruby, hoping for some help. She was a scribe and had more experience with dwarves than the six hours that Durham had acquired. He's assumed that, as a fellow human, she would make an effort to be some sort of cultural ambassador to help him survive past lunch. Ruby's current interpretation of being helpful seemed to be a silent smirk.”
― Jeffery Russell, The Dungeoneers

“Cheese, where you takes liquid from a cow lady's business parts, mix it with a bit o' juices from a baby cow's fourth stomach and then let it grow all fuzzy-moldy for a few years, eh?”
― Jeffery Russell, The Dungeoneers

“The Athenaeum always managed to have a scribe on hand whenever anything interesting seemed like it might happen. Durham avoided scribes, figuring that 'interesting' was not a word that was necessarily synonymous with 'pleasant'.”
― Jeffery Russell, The Dungeoneers

“Can't abide adventure. 'Adventure' is a word people use to put a shine on lack of preparation and surviving through dumb luck.”
― Jeffery Russell, The Dungeoneers

“A lich guards his phylactery like an elf guards his salad.”
― Jeffery Russell, The Dungeoneers

“Eureka!" Mungo yelled. It was a word that wasn't actually a word but which he'd mathematically proved to exist in a parallel realm and he quite liked the sound of it when it came to needing something to yell in moments of cerebral triumph.”
― Jeffery Russell, The Dungeoneers

“He attempted to bark the order and succeeded, albeit with more of a chihuahua result than intended.”
― Jeffery Russell, The Dungeoneers

“Teapots are not generally known for their aerodynamic qualities, hence the proclivity for their use during breaks between fighting rather than as an actual weapon of war.”
― Jeffery Russell, The Dungeoneers

“Chickens are true creatures of zen - they live only and absolutely for the moment. Their actions one particular second will not necessarily have any influence or bearing on their actions in the next second, nor are they necessarily influenced by their actions of the prior second. Chicken thoughts arrive in their tiny mad little minds like flashes of a strobe light, each light being an action, each flashing with the brilliance of a not very brilliant thing. Each action utterly random. The complete randomness of chaos. Chickens are notorious escape artists, not due to their ability to devise cunning plans as they huddle together in their coop beneath a bare light bulb, scratching out complex diagrams in the dirt, but simply out of sheet unpredictability. They are the pachinko balls of the animal kingdom, effecting their escapes through the simple device of, say, turning left for no particular reason.”
― Jeffery Russell, The Dungeoneers

“Ten wagons to choose from and you pick the only one that has a human on it. Racist.”
― Jeffery Russell, The Dungeoneers

“Dwarves are sequential hermaphroditic parthenogens," Ruby said, anticipating his question.

"What?"

"They can change back and forth from male to female and are capable of fertilizing themselves to make more dwarves. They exhibit what we regard as male characteristics, typically, but some favor a more feminine approach."

Durham sat with his mouth hanging open. Ruby poked him in the tongue with her quill feather making him gag and sputter.

"So, Ginny is, what, short for Regina? Virginia?"

"I rather think it's long to 'Gin'," Ruby answered. "She's head of hazard team and Thud's second."

"So, the changing sex thing. How does that work? Does it take a while or is it the sort of thing that might happen in the middle of a conversation?"

"Hard to say," Ruby said. "Does she need to clear her throat or did she just become a male? Is he just pausing for thought or did he just impregnate himself mid-sentence?" She shrugged. "Dwarf physiology isn't really my field."

"Is there an easy way to tell?"

"Which sex a dwarf is at the moment? Not that I'm aware of but I haven't managed to think of a situation where it would matter, either, so I've not dwelt on it much.”
― Jeffery Russell, The Dungeoneers

“There is a distinct evolutionary advantage to being fuzzy, as much of the mammal kingdom had discovered, particularly when you wanted a human to scratch your back. The dwarven evolutionary tree had embraced this concept wholeheartedly only to discover that once you started talking and expressing opinions a human's desire to scratch your back became directly inverse to how fuzzy it was.”
― Jeffery Russell, The Dungeoneers

“Mungo was a gnome. Disguised as a dwarf. The blatantly false beard was a giveaway. It appeared that Mungo had crafted it himself out of hair collected from a wide assortment of cars and then glued it to his face.”
― Jeffery Russell, The Dungeoneers

“The air was thick and still, chilled. Water dripped somewhere, irregularly. Was the sun positioned perfectly to send ruddy rays of light through the swirling dust within, throwing their shadows long and stark across the floor? Of course it was.”
― Jeffery Russell, The Dungeoneers