A review by arcanistaxel
The World of Critical Role by Liz Marsham, Cast of Critical Role

5.0

As someone who can't get enough of Critical Role and its castmembers, this book was an excellent fix for my addiction.

First of all: the book is gorgeous. The design fits Critical Role perfectly. The fantasy vibes are strong and all artwork is absolutely gorgeous. It looks like a book a shady merchant would ask 30 gold for, but it would totally be worth it.

A fan of the show already knows 90% of the contents of this book. The book does not tell you much news if you've watched both campaigns and the channel's related shows like Talks Machina and Between the sheets. But I'd be lying if I said I did not enjoy reading it all again. Reliving some of my favourite moments and characters was such a joy.

I was still at the start of watching campaign 1 when I started reading, and although there are MANY spoilers in the book for Vox Machina, I didn't mind. I found the first campaign very hard to get into, but the book made me more familiar with the characters and what was going on. And for CR being a show with 3-4 hours of content every week, there's still so much unspoiled things to enjoy, the character interactions and some of the casts greatest jokes, so being spoiled for the overall plot did not affect me much.

As read and watched on though, I skipped some pages about the end of the campaign. It was described in much detail what happened and by now I am so invested in Vox Machina that I want to leave the ending relatively unspoiled.

The book is about Critical Role, but I believe it is an ode to the fans, the critters. Time and time again, the cast expresses their gratitude to the fans, their genirosity and kindness to them, but to charity efforts moreso. It's evident that without the endless support of the fans, this book wouldn't even exist. The cast knows this full well and takes the opportunity to show how thankful they are.

All in all I am a proud fan who will shove this book in anyone's willing hands, because it is so wonderful to be a critter ❤