‘Has your life here been so difficult? You seem to fail upwards at every opportunity.’

Thus says Careena, the hag teaching Clyde Hatchett how exactly to use magic. It certainly doesn’t feel like that to Clyde, who’s still got a day job scraping mud (at least he hopes it’s dirt) out of monster pits, and whose ‘thieves’ guild’ is definitely more concerned with baking cookies than with safeguarding him against a rival gang. He helps to keep accumulating roommates-like a freed sex slave and a retired paladin-who make him nervous, but for very different reasons. And let’s not get started on the imitate that’s adopted residence by Clyde’s shower, or the supposedly tame grimeling in his wardrobe .

And yet despite having all the annoyances, interruptions, and occasional death dangers, Clyde’s found himself at the center of an enormous conspiracy to get rid of the Emperor. He’s the only person with proof that could save the person, and remove a whole network of corrupt nobles, wicked slavers, and power-hungry despots. Clyde really hopes Careena is normally right about him-the fate of the entire Empire depends upon it.