December’s Sword & Laser Book Club pick was a Dungeon Fantasy novel, Kings of the Wyld, one that takes a different spin on the “Adventuring Band” concept – treating the “Band” idea like a rock band.
The story is set in a fantasy setting that is probably a little closer to the concept of the “Points of Light” setting from D&D 4th Edition than most other D&D-inspired fantasy settings – with various cities serving as hubs for activities by adventuring bands, on the edge of a massive forest inhabited by various fantasy series. The key here is “D&D” – the setting has a lot of of the conventions about dungeon delving, fighting monsters with the classic D&D party lineup (minus clerics) – with a particular focus not only on the monster hunting, but also on the groups hyping up their actions.
The main characters of the series in particular are a group of over-the-hill adventurers who have split up and retired after years of the sex-drugs-and monster slaying lifestyle. When one of the members’ kids has grown up to become an adventurer with a band of their own, which has been caught in a siege by a horde of monsters, it’s time to get the band back together. (As in they literally say that).
The way this plays out ends up being fairly Picaresque. We get a bunch of segments with reassembling the band. Then an intermediary portion of the group trying to get to the besieged city, before finally figuring out a plan to not only pull off the rescue, but also lift the siege. This can cause that middle second to feel like it’s dead weight that doesn’t add anything to the story. It does make a meaningful contribution, but it’s not a dramatic one. It’s there to force the characters to truly understand the scope of the quest they’re attempting, and to reconsider their solution.
That said, this feels referential to Dungeons & Dragons RPG concepts and tropes in a way that does feel much more derivative. I don’t mean that in the sense of being in the genre of “Dungeon Fantasy”, or the fact that one of the members of our heroes is obsessed with finding evidence of Owlbears. Rather, there’s a mix of the comedic and the serious, the dramatic and the lewd in this story, and a particular level of quippyness that if the author had said “This is based on my D&D Campaign”, it would make total sense. If you made a movie trailer for this, you’d have a bunch of older actors doing fantasy action movie stuff set to classic rock. Like the trailer for the D&D movie, but with Mads Mikkelsen and Eric Bana playing elderly adventurers Clay & Gabe instead of Chris Pine and Michelle Rodriguez playing in-their-prime adventurers Edgin and Holga.
Kings of the Wyld was a fun novel to round out the year, and I should probably pick up the sequel at some point.Kings of the Wyld is available from Amazon and Bookshop.org. Buying anything through those links helps to support the site.
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