Review: Kings of the Wyld

Kings of the Wyld by Nicholas Eames
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

My brother told me to read this one, and there’s not a whole to say beyond that other than that it’s goofy fun. I’m reminded that, right up there with running too long, the distinctive flaw of most contemporary fantasy is how seriously it takes itself. There’s a humorlessness running through all the Tor six-inch spine books; all of creation typically stands at risk and only the great fill-in-the-blank hero can save it.

Not quite here. Our protagonists are a reunited ‘band’ of mercenaries – really a Dungeons and Dragons style group of heroes – who’ve come together to rescue the daughter of one of them. Eames does a good job of prompting us to realize that we know most of the context here. These guys have fought a thousand battles, getting singed or stabbed along the way, but never suffering a fatality. Unless you count their bards. Like Spinal Tap drummers, they keep losing their bards.

There’s a small thread of the serious here – our main hero, Clay, has become a family man who’s torn between staying home and helping his old friend on a mission of mercy – but mostly it’s a sustained good time. Our heroes have to regroup, have to pass through a forest full of terrors, and then have to confront an overwhelming horde of monsters whom we’ve come gradually to learn about along the way.

Eames begins with one major joke: these bands of mercenaries occupy the same pop-culture niche of their world as rock and roll bands occupy (or occupied) for us. Instead of being metal-heads who call their guitars “axes,” they carry real axes (and swords) as they carve up the bad guys or each other.

Eames manages to sustain that joke far longer and to much better effect than I’d have imagined. In this world, everyone wants to be a “merc.” Everyone wants to get famous as a great warrior – or thief or magician. Many get killed along the way, but it’s always in a fashion that reminds us this is just a kind of game.

Eames does a strong job of varying his narrative style, never letting the various battles devolve into this-guy-swung-then-that-guy-swung. I found myself so impressed with the clever way he solved some of the later narrative problems that I laughed along with the style itself.

And in the middle of all that, we get occasional moments of poignancy. My favorite is a two-headed monster, one head of which is blind. As the creature stumbles through one disaster after another, the sighted one narrates a happy and beautiful experience. The blind head thinks they’re venturing through beautiful fields and, when made to wear oxen yoke, that they’re bearing splendid artifacts around their necks. It’s a sweet fantasy within a fantasy, and it’s one of the many small things that lands here.

Don’t expect great literature here, but do expect a good time.


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