The Adventure Zone: Petals to the Metal by Clint McElroy, Griffin McElroy, Justin McElroy, Travis McElroy, & Carey Pietsch

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Content/Trigger Warnings: Explosions, bombs, death, vehicle accidents

✨ The Adventure Zone: Here There Be Gerblins ★★★★★

✨ The Adventure Zone: Murder on the Rockport Limited! ★★★★★

“For every evil impulse drawn from a tempted heart, there is a heroic deed, spurred on by unimaginable bravery.”

We have finally, FINALLY returned to The Adventure Zone! I know, I know… it’s been a hot minutes since I picked up this series, but we’re back and I’ve been eagerly waiting to start this. And what a more perfect season to pick this series back up than the autumnal season?! Truly, I’m thriving and this graphic novel, comic added 10 years onto my life! So grab your snack, sit back, and let’s follow our chaotic trio on a new chaotic adventure!

We once again join our chaotic friends, Magnus, Taako, Merle, and of course the hilarious dungeon master on a whole new adventure. This time our friend are jumping in the race car seats and they prepare to reclaiming The Sash of Gaia! However, they soon find out this won’t be so easy obtaining the artifact, and they’ll have a few close calls along the way. With the help of Hurley, our adventures will do everything they can to save lives and maintain balance, but… sometimes there’s a price to be paid and not even love can stop fate.

This was an absolutely fantastic read! If you don’t know by now, I absolutely love these characters and love following them. So when we’re introduced to Sloane and Hurley, we learn of their story, and their relationship… Be still my beating heart! I loved them, I absolutely loved them. They’re by no means a perfect couple and even the start of their relationship was rocky, but somehow they just work together. Not to mention, the height difference was so glorious to see. We stan tall women with short cuties! We also see some growth and development with our main three characters. We also get some very character specific moments for Taako and Merle, and I was thriving seeing them have their own moments. I wish we could of had a moment for Magnus, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed we’ll see it in the next book.

“I don’t know if you can hear this anymore. But on the off chance you’re listening… on the off chance you’re still you… I wanted to give you fair warning. You’re going to lose tomorrow. And then… And then you’re gonna come home.”

There’s also a lot of hilarious moments, a lot of action packed moments, but most importantly, the freaking ending of this book wrecked me. I was sobbing and getting so emotional over how everything concludes. If there was ever a way to make me realize how attached to these characters, the ending really made me realize that. Even more so for Sloane and Hurley! We only have these two for this volume and everything that we get to learn about those two, it wasn’t enough. I wanted more and despite knowing we’d only have them for this volume, I still got emotional about their whole journey. This is what this series does so well though! It makes you get attached to these characters, no matter how brief or long term, and you just want to see them thrive, and succeed.

If I had to say anything negative about this volume, it’s that I have more questions than I do answers. Volume two of this series already gave us a whole lot of questions that we don’t get answers to and now we’re in the third volume, still without anymore clarity. The ending of this left me with so many more questions than answers and I really wish I had a bread crumb to go off of. Even the small scenes for foreshadowing doesn’t really lead me to a whole lot either. So I’m invested to get my answers, but also I wish we had gotten at least a bread crumb at the end or something.

“Is it for keepsies? Everything is for keepsies if you’re sneaky about it.”

Overall, I always have a blast reading this series and getting caught up on the shenanigans of this family. There were so many funny moments like Merle and the vines, and the introduction of Garyl, too! I need more of this, more of Garyl in general! It was just a fun time and I love a good story that can remind me how much I love and adore my all my nerdy goodness. I highly recommend this book to anyone who loves DnD, loves RPG (role playing games), or just want a fast read for any readathons. I do recommend that you read these in order though because, in my opinion, the recaps don’t always give all the best details to give a good overall of what’s happened thus far. So read them in order and have fun while you do!