A review by danilanglie
The World of Critical Role by Liz Marsham, Cast of Critical Role
4.0
This was a treat, and a great coffee table book to have if you're a Critical Role nerd! The thing that stopped me from giving a full five stars was that there were portions of the book that felt a little self-congratulatory... like, I know the author was interviewing them and writing her own positive spin on things, but there sure were about a thousand references to how generous and kind and charitable the cast is, and how they're so humble, too, it's really all about how great the *community* is, guys! I'm not saying this was terrible to read or turned me off of the book altogether, but there were a few eye-rolls sprinkled in for me.
My favorite parts of the story were the deep-dives into the various characters and plot elements of the actual campaigns, going through and learning about character creation, and seeing the maps of Exandria, which were actually quite helpful in reframing some things about both campaigns in my mind, as to where exactly different events were happening!
Another small ding against this book is no fault of its own: they couldn't really get into the flaws/failures of the brand very much. I'm not saying I wanted a whole gossipy session where they spilled the beans about Orion Acaba's exit or how things went down behind the scenes with Geek & Sundry... but beyond mentioning some quirky events early on that now wouldn't happen (Travis missing a session to catch a Marvel movie; the cast eating during the streams), they didn't really talk about when things went wrong. Like the Kickstarter, for example. It's this great story of how the cast completely underestimated the support they might expect from their legion of fans, and all their stretch goals were obliterated within hours. But also... there's a story there about management, about how they had to scramble to reframe the project, about how their own research failed them hard when they started off. And there's controversy to the fact that they've now partnered with Amazon, that the fan-funded project is now in the hands of one of the biggest streaming services in the world. There was no nuance to any of this, no real mention of it. And I'm sure that's partially for legal reasons, and I'm not saying I wanted this book to be a "tell all" of Critical Role's "seedy underbelly"... I guess maybe I was just looking for a more nuanced take on some aspects of the show's journey, on occasion!
But overall, I had fun reading this, I learned something new about the cast and their characters, and I'm just as in love with this nerdy-ass group of voice actors as ever!
My favorite parts of the story were the deep-dives into the various characters and plot elements of the actual campaigns, going through and learning about character creation, and seeing the maps of Exandria, which were actually quite helpful in reframing some things about both campaigns in my mind, as to where exactly different events were happening!
Another small ding against this book is no fault of its own: they couldn't really get into the flaws/failures of the brand very much. I'm not saying I wanted a whole gossipy session where they spilled the beans about Orion Acaba's exit or how things went down behind the scenes with Geek & Sundry... but beyond mentioning some quirky events early on that now wouldn't happen (Travis missing a session to catch a Marvel movie; the cast eating during the streams), they didn't really talk about when things went wrong. Like the Kickstarter, for example. It's this great story of how the cast completely underestimated the support they might expect from their legion of fans, and all their stretch goals were obliterated within hours. But also... there's a story there about management, about how they had to scramble to reframe the project, about how their own research failed them hard when they started off. And there's controversy to the fact that they've now partnered with Amazon, that the fan-funded project is now in the hands of one of the biggest streaming services in the world. There was no nuance to any of this, no real mention of it. And I'm sure that's partially for legal reasons, and I'm not saying I wanted this book to be a "tell all" of Critical Role's "seedy underbelly"... I guess maybe I was just looking for a more nuanced take on some aspects of the show's journey, on occasion!
But overall, I had fun reading this, I learned something new about the cast and their characters, and I'm just as in love with this nerdy-ass group of voice actors as ever!