Week 14 Reading Diary B: Ryder's Twenty-Two Goblins

Today, I finally finished the Twenty-Two Goblins. The last set of riddles were as entertaining as the other I suppose; I'm still trying to figure out the King's logic for each of his answers. The thing that really stood out to me about this reading was the ending. It was a pretty big plot twist to find out that the monk had been planning on killing the king this whole time (if the Goblin is to be believed) and even more surprising to just the king lop off his head without giving it a second thought. His reward for outsmarting the monk was power over all fairies and magical creatures, which seems like it would be pretty cool, but he decides to give that up just so the riddles can be spread all over the world. I guess my problem with this story was that I was expecting something with maybe more human motivations, like the epics. But this story seems to be a lot more moralizing in comparison, which is not necessarily a bad thing, it just made the characters seems a bit flat I guess.

"Sadhu," an Indian Monk; source: pixbay