Kings of the Wyld by Nicholas Eames
I am not a big fan of modern fantasy novels. I may be one of the few who couldn’t stand Game of Thrones and still find Lord of the Rings boring.
It’s not a genre I have a lot of luck with when recommended to me. I have a lot of pulp fantasy novels I will be doing a Conan review soon. I prefer a lot of the older pulp fantasy tales. Robert E Howard is a master of his art and, in my opinion, still better than a lot of the titles out today. I think many of them are bloated and boring, as each new author seems to want to make their version of Lord of the Rings. The only one I have read until recently would be the Joe Abercrombie novels, but I eventually got pretty bored of those.
So, I have had this novel on my shelf for a while. One, I was drawn to it because it had an actual painted cover rather than some terrible design of Photoshop montage Secondly, it used the Bill and Ted spelling of Wyld. So, eventually, after seeing some other reviews I decided to bite the axe and dive in. I kept picking it up from my shelf, but the thickness of it just kept putting me off as I just presumed It was going to be another boring, over-complicated, humourless dull book with hardly any action and excitement. I’m glad to say I was so spectacularly wrong and this is a cracking novel. Funny, action-packed, exciting, and serious when it needs to be, it has a heavy dose of RPG humour and great characters. It nods to all the great fantasy novels with a big wink and tongue firmly placed on its cheek. Plus it also has music at its heart! Each chapter is named after a particular rock song.
So here is the spec:
Clay Cooper was once a member of Saga, the most renowned mercenary band in the world, but has since retired to live in peace with his wife and young daughter–until the night his old bandmate Gabriel shows up on his doorstep, desperate for help. Gabe’s daughter, Rose, is trapped in a city half the world away, besieged by a host of monsters known as the Heartwyld Horde.
Clay reluctantly agrees to go along, and together they set out to reunite the disparate members of their old band: Moog, an absent-minded wizard; Matrick, a cuckolded king held prisoner by his wife; and Ganelon, a deadly warrior who has spent the decades since Saga disbanded encased in stone.
Reunited, they set out across the vast, monster-infested forest called the Heartwyld, clashing along the way with feral cannibals, vengeful gods, and a relentless bounty hunter named Larkspur. The Horde awaiting them at Castia, however, is the greatest threat of all, and to overcome it Saga must convince both their aging peers and a generation of restless youth to risk everything in pursuit of a mercenary’s most valued currency: everlasting glory.
It’s time to get the band back together.
This is such a great book. I had such a good time reading it and genuinely laughed out loud a couple of times. The character setups are pretty cliche (crappy wizard, the warrior turned king who hates being a king, surly warrior who hates everyone, the warrior turned farmer, etc) but the author obviously knows what he’s doing here and plays with them perfectly. Also, some of the side characters are wonderful, especially the zombie called Kit, a posh and friendly revenant poet, and storyteller. The action is really fast-paced edge-of-the-seat stuff, with monsters, dragons, and flying shops!! The main character Clay’s internal monologue is at times moving and hysterical.
The exact opposite of all the modern fantasy fiction I have read over the past few years. A real antidote to the overblown historical back story, in-depth political machinations of something like Game of Thrones. If you want a book that is about Machiavellian, Macbeth tragedy, backstabbing political machinations, breasts, and dragons, this is not a book for you. If you want a roller coaster ride with side-hurting laughs and characters whom you care for because they care for everyone around them, and a dose of cracking rock music history, then this is the book for you! There is a sequel, Bloody Rose, that I’m leaving until Christmas break.
I highly recommend this , even if you’re not a fan of the fantasy genre.
Also, look at that magnificent cover by Richard Anderson, check out his Instagram here.
You can check out the world on the author’s website https://nicholaseames.com/ which also includes a Spotify playlist for the first 2 books!
Come on Mr Eames, you need to get that third book done!
