Kings of the Wyld

It was said that the Free City drew all sorts, but mostly it drew all sorts of bad. Bright-eyed adventurers from all over Grandual came to Conthas with dreams of joining a band and touring the Wyld, and inevitably those dreams were distorted, like something reflected in a mirror made of shoddy glass. That, or they had the mirror broken over their heads.

I don't often dip into sword-and-sorcery fantasy like this often, which is kind of strange given the fact that I've either been in or have been actively running a D&D campaign pretty much continuously since 2015. You'd think that I'd be eating this kind of stuff up all the time, but reading this reminded me of why I tend to stay away from the genre with respect to my reading habits: it was an awesome, breakneck story that I feel like would've been more enjoyable in any medium other than a novel.

I was looking to shale things up and get my hands on a good hefty tome of a fantasy book that could be a standalone entry and wouldn't get me bogged down in a huge spanning series; this seemed to be a good fit. And it was a fun premise: a past-their-prime band of adventurers who were A-list celebrities twenty years ago need to get back together for one last job. But not all of them have kept themselves in tip-top shape all these years and hijinks ensue. I'm on board so far.

I think there were two main things that tripped me up with this story, the first being the pacing and the second being the protagonist. "Nonstop action" is a common blurb you see in advertising, but it actually applies here; there's damn near no downtime between chapters and one scene packed with dramatic action flows right into the next. But then that one flows into the next and so on and soon I feel like I'm out of breath. There were occasional moments of respite that finally gave the characters a chance to, you know, talk to each other, but they felt a little too spaced out for my tastes.

We're also following the perspective of one Clay Cooper, better known as "Slowhand" because he had a reputation of being the first one punched in the face in many a barroom brawl. I liked the idea of Clay, the sort of strong silent type who would occasionally drop a devastating one-liner, but that dynamic felt kind of cheapened when there's a second strong silent type with one-liners of his own already in the group, and there's only five of them. There were also long passages where Clay wasn't speaking or doing much of anything and it felt like the story was happening around him and not because of him. Just a more passive take on a protagonist than I'm used to, but that didn't mean I disliked him, I just wish I got more out of him.

That said, this book is effortlessly funny and got multiple genuine out-loud laughs from me, which I was not expecting. It leans on a lot of high fantasy tropes, but treats them more like a scaffolding than a crutch, and I was expecting them anyway so I'm not mad about it. Lots of memorable characters, interesting dynamics between the core group of old friends that fell out of touch with each other, a compelling antagonist, worldbuilding that didn't come off as daunting or distracting, and clever and witty prose are the things that are going to stick with me long after finishing this story.

Curiously I get the impression that I would've enjoyed this story more if it were serialized and I read like one chapter a week and stretched it out over a few months, or if it were a comic series or a podcast. Then again for me personally, my eyes start glazing over with any book past the 300 page mark, so maybe I was never really the target audience for this book.

Imagine that after 20-25 years or so, you and your friends find the opportunity to play D&D again with your old characters. They've aged as you've aged. They've grown as you've grown, albeit without your guidance. And then... you get the band back together.

That's what it's like to read Kings of the Wyld. The setting is wild, humorous, and made for spectacle. Eames has set gentle hooks rooted in classic rock n' roll to get readers used to the in-jokes and the setting, but that's not the true appeal of this book. It's the characters.

Yes, there are scenes that are raucous and cinematic, but it's the moments between the chaos when the characters are interacting with each other that really give this book its heart. The wizard looking for an impossible cure. The warrior who desperately needs the help of his friends. The king seeking an escape. The stalwart shield who seeks to protect all his comrades. And even the lesser characters stand out, in particular a heart-wrenchingly sweet ettin.

I loved this book. I'd especially suggest it to anyone who's played D&D and knows of its magic combination of danger, humor, and camraderie.

I can see why people loved this.
I'm torn between giving it 3 stars and 4, because while it wasn't what I want in a fantasy story, it is well-constructed for the type of story it is. Sadly, it's just not the type of story I like.

So what is it? It's a romp. A group of D&D archetypes in a world where D&D adventurers are treated like rock stars, quite literally. They're not just treated well: the story is framed as if they were a modern band in a medieval world, dealing with things a modern music act deals with. It is not a comedy, however, just a lighthearted adventure story.

It's packed with references to bands and music, which is not an area of trivia I'm great at, but I could identify things as references even where I wasn't sure what they were references to. Despite that, the plot bumps along at a decent pace, and the interactions are fun. The characters aren't particularly deep, but they're interesting and believably drawn for D&D adventurer archetypes.

If those elements alone seem good to you, then you'll have fun with this book and you should give it a read... but you should expect that there aren't really any other elements to the story.

As great as Eames's work is at the things it does, the grim specter of Chekov's Gun looms over the entirety of it. Not even the slightest thing is introduced unless it is part the plot; that's often hailed as a positive in a dramatic criticism, but in fantasy literature it saps the vitality of the world and leaves the background feeling two-dimensional, like the flat backdrop of a play that is wheeled in and out as the actors strut upon the stage.

The mysterious depths of Tolkien's mythos, the sprawling madness of Mieville's Crobuzon, the perplexing intricacies of Bancroft's Tower... those just aren't here. None of Eames's book concerns the ordinary citizens of his world, and so we learn nothing about their lives. There is no hint of history or mythology to the world which does not directly impact the lives of the characters. Even their own past lives are largely in service to the plot. Absolutely nothing extends the world beyond the pages.

For me, the essence of what I enjoy in fantasy is that sort of magical tourism. I love to wander the shire and imagine the smell of flowers baking bread, and to know that Sauron was apparently a problem for some ancient kingdom that never comes up again in the story. All those details and depth create an experience beyond a simple recounting of the plot, and Kings of the Wyld is missing those things. There's an ancient empire, but they go there, there's some gods, but they meet them, there's some grand mythic underpinning to the world, but only because their story traces to its origin. Nothing ventures beyond that. There's no menace of Jabba the Hutt and his gangsters hanging off in the corners; if it's mentioned, it shows up and is dealt with.
Everything is Chekhov's Gun.

It is, in essence, a pastiche of a random D&D campaign, run by a DM who loves music and doesn't have any particular setting information in mind. It excels at recreating that experience... but it doesn't do anything more than that. It's fun, but it's a bit shallow. If that's the kind of book you can enjoy, then you will love this. If you expect more, then it may be mildly disappointing, but otherwise unobjectionable.