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A review by bklassen
Kings of the Wyld by Nicholas Eames
adventurous
funny
lighthearted
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
You know those books that people say to keep reading? “It doesn’t get good until a third or a fourth of the way through, just keep reading!”
That’s how Kings of the Wyld felt to me. I had high hopes for it as it was repeatedly mentioned as a book that would scratch that DnD itch. “It reads like a group of old friends playing Dungeons and Dragons together!” I suppose it did, but maybe I don’t actually want to read that. Maybe I want a more tightly edited and plotted story than the one I read. Or maybe Nicholas Eames would have benefitted from a harsher editor, who knows.
I’m going to give this book a big old compliment sandwich. This one is STACKED, like a death defying sandwich assembled by Shaggy and Scooby.
Firstly, the main characters were quite good. I really enjoy the “getting the band back together” motif, so once the entire crew was reunited about 25 to 33% through, my enjoyment rose exponentially. The first third or so did feel a bit meandering as it set up the different characters coming together and accomplishing some side gigs.
Matty, Ganelon, Clay, Gabe, and Moog all felt like they had their distinct personalities and characteristics, even if a lot of the time they sounded alike when speaking. I imagine writing dialogue for different characters is extremely difficult. I also like how Eames portrayed the different DnD classes without saying it outright necessarily. Matty is a rogue, Gabe is a paladin, Moog is a wizard, and Ganelon and Clay are both fighters. There are even bards!
Clay is a great protagonist because although he is not the main quest initiator, he definitely has his own demons to fight and growth to experience.
Also who cannot love the reluctant but loyal party member. Although he rightfully has his reservations about the journey, he knows in his heart that it’s the right thing to do and then is fully on board.
The pace is kept pretty even keel the entire time once it actually gets going, which is to say that it moves quite quickly. There is no shortage of locations, events, interactions, and other characters that this group experiences, and at times there is some really nice “downtime” dialogue that either gives more character growth, character development, or just some nice slower pacing to offset the faster action scenes.
Eames’ prose is competent enough, but as readers of my reviews can likely now anticipate, I’m going to say my favorite phrase: It is important to set expectations of a book. This does not make a book better or worse per say, but more so helps establish tone. Kings of the Wyld does set the tone quite early on that it is irreverent without being overly gross, juvenile, or dark/gory, and that the reader can expect meta or pop culture references as well as a modern tone for dialogue.
There are some really nice lines in this book, like Clay asking himself if he is more monster or man. And some of the descriptions took me by surprise by how lovely they were.
However, there is this annoying thing that Eames does with fair regularity, which is that he sucks the air out of a scene’s tension or suspense like popping a tire. My examples contain some spoilers for several story beats, so read on at your own risk:
When they fake Matty’s death, Clay cleverly prevents Lillith and her new boyfriend from setting the pyre on fire, a la viking funeral, but then she announces that he is essentially heading over a waterfall. How suspenseful! Once might think that they would rush to see what will happen to their soon to be eviscerated friend, but no, the next chapter jumps ahead to the slight future in which the character is fine beyond a few cuts and bruises. The suspense was not slowly let down. It takes as sharp of a drop as the plot point.
In another moment, the group comes across some Owlbears, who are referenced multiple times earlier as being ever elusive and never seen by anyone still living. This group actually sees one, which is a huge moment for Moog, who has always wanted to see one. However, this owlbear decides to charge them and you anticipate an epic clash that pays off the mythos of owlbears in this book, but no, the next chapter opens with another slight time jump and the crew has handily dispatched the foe with minimal injuries and now the group has 2 new companions. By the way, the 2 new companions (in this case) do not have any further payoff. It’s like Checkoff’s gun, except the gun is fired off stage and the characters carry the bullets around, talking about them and occasionally showing them, but no other big plot points happen regarding said bullets, not even character development. What was the point of that interaction? It felt truly pointless to me, and I was angry that a cool fight scene and narrative payoff could have been paid off, but instead it happens off camera and nothing really happens afterward.
This kind of thing happens all the time in this book, and at times, even that writing device feels pointless because the plot will set up a tense and epic moment at the end of a chapter, and the next chapter will open with “it turned out to be a dumb decision, because…” and the chapter will proceed with a full description of that scene as it happens like a normal chapter. Why even use that device, then? You can jump ahead in the scene to keep the action moving without calling attention to it. I don’t know, it really bothered me and felt like another reason to get a better editor.
Some other annoying things include the humor, the female characters, and the slightly unearned payoff of the villains or antagonists.
The Humor didn’t land for me. Two of the most egregious jokes: the phylactery giving everyone boners (yup, you heard me right) or the dumb Elvis joke toward the end. Maybe it was my frustration with the early part of the book, or that this humor is definitely aimed more at dudes, but I never laughed at any of the jokes, and I certainly wouldn’t put myself in the highbrow humor category. I like to laugh at a good old poop or dick joke as the next person, but maybe I have a hard time conceptualizing modern day dialogue and humor in a fully fantasy world. I don’t know. I’ve heard from and read from so many others that they found this book hilarious, so perhaps I’m just the outlier.
As for the female characters, I found myself frustrated with how they are portrayed. There are a total of 6 women in this book, one of which is a young girl so she doesn’t really count. There’s 9 if you count 3 other female characters who are barely in this:
- Ex-wife, total wet blanket and thinly coded as a woke SJW for creatures; now a junkie and shitty mother, aka completely absent mother. Barely there.
- Sort of ex-wife who is cold, calculating, and cruelly cuckholds her husband. Barely there.
- Tally, Clay’s daughter: one of the impetus (impeti?) for pushing Clay to join the story. Barely there.
- Ginny, Clay’s wife: also described as a wet blanket when it comes to Clay and his exploits and friends. Considered one of the good ones, but doesn’t appear much. Barely there.
- Jain: Funny bandit who robs/meets the group multiple times with her Silk Arrows troupe of women. Has some pretty funny scenes, and she’s cool.
- Member of another mercenary band: Pretty cool, but gets a bit of dialogue and a little action. Dies off screen. Rest of her male band are fine and alive. Suspicious.
- Cannibal chief: Fat cannibal woman. That’s it.
- Bloody Rose: Gabe’s daughter, in danger, and the main, main impetus for the whole story, or at least what spurs Gabe to get the group together. Not on page much, but she does have her own book, so I’m giving her a pass, but it contains much side-eye from me.
- Larkspur/Sabbatha: Now HERE was a badass bounty hunter female character! She was tough, intimidating, competent, and a great antagonist. She also gets to open up about her past and is given some character development and joins the band for a bit! However, when she regroups with Saga after betraying them only a few chapters earlier, it is because she wants to bone Ganelon more? She sweeps back into the main fray, madly kisses Ganelon, and that’s pretty much it. She doesn’t apologize, she doesn’t explain why she came back, she doesn’t really talk to them beyond small lines here or there about handling monsters. It’s like she had a huge character growth moment off screen that causes her to have a change of heart (officially, because her hesitation to kill Clay was very much up in the air before getting shot by an airship bolt), and the audience is never privy to that growth. Ultimately disappointing when she had a real chance to be a fully fleshed out characters like her male counterparts. Also, when she joins the group, her voice becomes indistinguishable from the rest of the Saga band, but I suppose that’s par for the course.
I realize I sound like a nag at this point, but man, it’s just disappointing when you want and hope for some equal representation. And it’s not to say the Saga characters are all perfect or that there aren’t male villains, but boy howdy, there are WAY more men than women and they get the lion’s share of character development and epic scenes.
For anyone who cares, I always reference NPR’s pop culture happy hour discussion about Black Widow in the Avengers: Age of Ultron (and I’m paraphrasing a bit, but did relisten to that episode to refresh my memory):
“There’s nothing you can do with the only female avenger that’s not going to be troublesome in some way, because that’s what it is to give only one window. If swapped out with any other avenger as the “one woman”, you get representation issues:
- As Black Widow: She has the most obvious love story, deals with reproduction ability (aka cannot have kids) issues, and is the only true hand fighter of the group.
- As Hulk: She has anger issues in a “can’t control my feelings” way.
- As Captain America: She keeps everyone’s behavior in line, like a behavior cop/mom.
- As Hawkeye: She is conflicted about work/life balance. Superfluous.
- As Thor: She disappears for half the movie and doesn’t have any development or feel integral in any way.
- As Tony Stark: Of course, she’s the one that causes all the trouble and needs to set up a rescue.
No matter what role is given to a woman, you get a stereotypical portrayal of women because there’s only one lens you’re viewing “women” through, which is then very narrow.”
Moving on. Putting soapbox away.
The take down or vindication of villains or antagonists felt a bit… undeserved. I would have liked to see a thematically resonant end of that storyline, especially when you set up a bad guy as Eames did. Think Count of Monte Cristo, A Knight’s Tale, Gladiator, Lion King, or Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Last Ark.
You want a big climax in which the good guys triumph over evil in a proportionate level to the harm done to both to the immediate protagonist and the world, especially in a classic fantasy story, and hell, especially <i>especially</i> in a DnD game. You want to cheer when the villain dies or gets their comeuppance. I don’t know, I think the ending of this book didn’t deliver that to me in favor of setting up his next book. Feels a bit cheap.
However, when it comes to the BBEG (big bad evil guy), I do think Lastleaf was an excellent villain. He held power, was badass, and given his backstory, was a formidable foe with what felt like a reasonable backstory and reason to take over the world, or at least would once he accomplishes his first goal of taking down the major city of Castia. In fact, I could even see a few parallels to World War II in terms of a siege on a city (Leningrad) and the appeasement of giving a villain something they want in hopes of placating them so that they don’t take more (Nazi Germany, but you if you give a mouse a cookie…). There was also a major theme of other cities turning a blind eye and cold heart (Can’t lose) to the siege of Castia simply because they were so far removed from the violence (USA). It felt like a realistic reaction to a huge fight like this, especially when one side is insurmountable in terms of organization, vitriol, size, and power.
Furthermore, I really enjoyed the world building of this book. The concept of bands of mercs out for glory eventually turning toward vanity projects and gladiators because there is less glory and more pain when accepting contracts to kill monsters. Why do that when you can get fame and glory just by traveling to major cities and fighting captively bred monsters in gladiator stadiums for sport?
The world, the cities, the monsters, and the history of the world felt well thought out and deep. I really enjoyed Eames’ weaving of the druin and the gods/goddess lore. It felt pretty natural, even when given in a bit of exposition from other characters.
Given all of my nitpicks and found faults, you might boggle at my 3.5-star review. I, myself, am a bit surprised. There are plenty of things this book could improve upon, but as I’ve stated numerous times, once the book picks up, it actually becomes a fun adventure! If you can turn off your brain better than I can, then kudos to you. I definitely recognize that I am an outlier in the response to this book.
That’s how Kings of the Wyld felt to me. I had high hopes for it as it was repeatedly mentioned as a book that would scratch that DnD itch. “It reads like a group of old friends playing Dungeons and Dragons together!” I suppose it did, but maybe I don’t actually want to read that. Maybe I want a more tightly edited and plotted story than the one I read. Or maybe Nicholas Eames would have benefitted from a harsher editor, who knows.
I’m going to give this book a big old compliment sandwich. This one is STACKED, like a death defying sandwich assembled by Shaggy and Scooby.
Firstly, the main characters were quite good. I really enjoy the “getting the band back together” motif, so once the entire crew was reunited about 25 to 33% through, my enjoyment rose exponentially. The first third or so did feel a bit meandering as it set up the different characters coming together and accomplishing some side gigs.
Matty, Ganelon, Clay, Gabe, and Moog all felt like they had their distinct personalities and characteristics, even if a lot of the time they sounded alike when speaking. I imagine writing dialogue for different characters is extremely difficult. I also like how Eames portrayed the different DnD classes without saying it outright necessarily. Matty is a rogue, Gabe is a paladin, Moog is a wizard, and Ganelon and Clay are both fighters. There are even bards!
Clay is a great protagonist because although he is not the main quest initiator, he definitely has his own demons to fight and growth to experience.
Also who cannot love the reluctant but loyal party member. Although he rightfully has his reservations about the journey, he knows in his heart that it’s the right thing to do and then is fully on board.
The pace is kept pretty even keel the entire time once it actually gets going, which is to say that it moves quite quickly. There is no shortage of locations, events, interactions, and other characters that this group experiences, and at times there is some really nice “downtime” dialogue that either gives more character growth, character development, or just some nice slower pacing to offset the faster action scenes.
Eames’ prose is competent enough, but as readers of my reviews can likely now anticipate, I’m going to say my favorite phrase: It is important to set expectations of a book. This does not make a book better or worse per say, but more so helps establish tone. Kings of the Wyld does set the tone quite early on that it is irreverent without being overly gross, juvenile, or dark/gory, and that the reader can expect meta or pop culture references as well as a modern tone for dialogue.
There are some really nice lines in this book, like Clay asking himself if he is more monster or man. And some of the descriptions took me by surprise by how lovely they were.
However, there is this annoying thing that Eames does with fair regularity, which is that he sucks the air out of a scene’s tension or suspense like popping a tire. My examples contain some spoilers for several story beats, so read on at your own risk:
In another moment, the group
This kind of thing happens all the time in this book, and at times, even that writing device feels pointless because the plot will set up a tense and epic moment at the end of a chapter, and the next chapter will open with “it turned out to be a dumb decision, because…” and the chapter will proceed with a full description of that scene as it happens like a normal chapter. Why even use that device, then? You can jump ahead in the scene to keep the action moving without calling attention to it. I don’t know, it really bothered me and felt like another reason to get a better editor.
Some other annoying things include the humor, the female characters, and the slightly unearned payoff of the villains or antagonists.
The Humor didn’t land for me. Two of the most egregious jokes: the phylactery giving everyone boners (yup, you heard me right) or the dumb Elvis joke toward the end. Maybe it was my frustration with the early part of the book, or that this humor is definitely aimed more at dudes, but I never laughed at any of the jokes, and I certainly wouldn’t put myself in the highbrow humor category. I like to laugh at a good old poop or dick joke as the next person, but maybe I have a hard time conceptualizing modern day dialogue and humor in a fully fantasy world. I don’t know. I’ve heard from and read from so many others that they found this book hilarious, so perhaps I’m just the outlier.
As for the female characters, I found myself frustrated with how they are portrayed. There are a total of 6 women in this book, one of which is a young girl so she doesn’t really count. There’s 9 if you count 3 other female characters who are barely in this:
- Ex-wife, total wet blanket and thinly coded as a woke SJW for creatures; now a junkie and shitty mother, aka completely absent mother. Barely there.
- Sort of ex-wife who is cold, calculating, and cruelly cuckholds her husband. Barely there.
- Tally, Clay’s daughter: one of the impetus (impeti?) for pushing Clay to join the story. Barely there.
- Ginny, Clay’s wife: also described as a wet blanket when it comes to Clay and his exploits and friends. Considered one of the good ones, but doesn’t appear much. Barely there.
- Jain: Funny bandit who robs/meets the group multiple times with her Silk Arrows troupe of women. Has some pretty funny scenes, and she’s cool.
- Member of another mercenary band: Pretty cool, but gets a bit of dialogue and a little action. Dies off screen. Rest of her male band are fine and alive. Suspicious.
- Cannibal chief: Fat cannibal woman. That’s it.
- Bloody Rose: Gabe’s daughter, in danger, and the main, main impetus for the whole story, or at least what spurs Gabe to get the group together. Not on page much, but she does have her own book, so I’m giving her a pass, but it contains much side-eye from me.
- Larkspur/Sabbatha: Now HERE was a badass bounty hunter female character! She was tough, intimidating, competent, and a great antagonist. She also gets to open up about her past and is given some character development and joins the band for a bit! However,
I realize I sound like a nag at this point, but man, it’s just disappointing when you want and hope for some equal representation. And it’s not to say the Saga characters are all perfect or that there aren’t male villains, but boy howdy, there are WAY more men than women and they get the lion’s share of character development and epic scenes.
For anyone who cares, I always reference NPR’s pop culture happy hour discussion about Black Widow in the Avengers: Age of Ultron (and I’m paraphrasing a bit, but did relisten to that episode to refresh my memory):
“There’s nothing you can do with the only female avenger that’s not going to be troublesome in some way, because that’s what it is to give only one window. If swapped out with any other avenger as the “one woman”, you get representation issues:
- As Black Widow: She has the most obvious love story, deals with reproduction ability (aka cannot have kids) issues, and is the only true hand fighter of the group.
- As Hulk: She has anger issues in a “can’t control my feelings” way.
- As Captain America: She keeps everyone’s behavior in line, like a behavior cop/mom.
- As Hawkeye: She is conflicted about work/life balance. Superfluous.
- As Thor: She disappears for half the movie and doesn’t have any development or feel integral in any way.
- As Tony Stark: Of course, she’s the one that causes all the trouble and needs to set up a rescue.
No matter what role is given to a woman, you get a stereotypical portrayal of women because there’s only one lens you’re viewing “women” through, which is then very narrow.”
Moving on. Putting soapbox away.
The take down or vindication of villains or antagonists felt a bit… undeserved. I would have liked to see a thematically resonant end of that storyline, especially when you set up a bad guy as Eames did. Think Count of Monte Cristo, A Knight’s Tale, Gladiator, Lion King, or Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Last Ark.
You want a big climax in which the good guys triumph over evil in a proportionate level to the harm done to both to the immediate protagonist and the world, especially in a classic fantasy story, and hell, especially <i>especially</i> in a DnD game. You want to cheer when the villain dies or gets their comeuppance. I don’t know, I think the ending of this book didn’t deliver that to me in favor of setting up his next book. Feels a bit cheap.
However, when it comes to the BBEG (big bad evil guy), I do think Lastleaf was an excellent villain. He held power, was badass, and given his backstory, was a formidable foe with what felt like a reasonable backstory and reason to take over the world, or at least would once he accomplishes his first goal of taking down the major city of Castia. In fact, I could even see a few parallels to World War II in terms of a siege on a city (Leningrad) and the appeasement of giving a villain something they want in hopes of placating them so that they don’t take more (Nazi Germany, but you if you give a mouse a cookie…). There was also a major theme of other cities turning a blind eye and cold heart (Can’t lose) to the siege of Castia simply because they were so far removed from the violence (USA). It felt like a realistic reaction to a huge fight like this, especially when one side is insurmountable in terms of organization, vitriol, size, and power.
Furthermore, I really enjoyed the world building of this book. The concept of bands of mercs out for glory eventually turning toward vanity projects and gladiators because there is less glory and more pain when accepting contracts to kill monsters. Why do that when you can get fame and glory just by traveling to major cities and fighting captively bred monsters in gladiator stadiums for sport?
The world, the cities, the monsters, and the history of the world felt well thought out and deep. I really enjoyed Eames’ weaving of the druin and the gods/goddess lore. It felt pretty natural, even when given in a bit of exposition from other characters.
Given all of my nitpicks and found faults, you might boggle at my 3.5-star review. I, myself, am a bit surprised. There are plenty of things this book could improve upon, but as I’ve stated numerous times, once the book picks up, it actually becomes a fun adventure! If you can turn off your brain better than I can, then kudos to you. I definitely recognize that I am an outlier in the response to this book.