Review: Kings of the Wyld

When you work at a bookstore, the natural inclination when it’s slow is to find something to read. Pre-pandemic I’d usually keep to the comics for the sake of speed, but post 2020, things got very slow, which is how I reread Bone and read the Red Rising Trilogy and Poppy War. And in January 2023, with the lull after the holidays, I read Kings of the Wyld in the same way, in the spaces between transactions, memorizing page numbers whenever I put it down. And what a way to work.

Kings of the Wyld is a delight. Caked in the language and symbolism of both Dungeons and Dragons and classic rock, the story takes you on an epic journey alongside old men and new adventures.

The PCs–ahem–main characters of Kings of the Wyld are the former members of the epic band of mercenary heroes known as Saga, who in their heyday ventured into cursed forests, slew countless monsters in defense of civilization, claimed a magic sword from a doomed immortal, nearly slayed a dragon, and had a right good time. Twenty years after the band broke up, Clay “Slowhand” Cooper–the band’s tank I mean bassist I mean–wanders home toward his wife and daughter to find none other than band frontman Golden Gabe, ragged, filthy, his magic sword pawned for cash, begging for help because his daughter, his pride and joy, went and followed in his footsteps and got herself stuck in the middle of a siege of monsters on the other side of the world. And the only people dumb and brave enough to save her might just be Saga.

The setting of Kings of the Wild is generic in the best of ways. A collapsed empire of decadent elves rabbit-eared immortals, vying principalities with blond barbarians in the north and desert dwelling merchants in the south, a cursed forest full of occasionally sympathetic monsters and the mercenaries who slay them for good or glory. Unabashed references to Dungeons and Dragons dance across the page, from regenerating trolls to dragon-winged Chimeras to the party wizard’s lifelong search for the mythological Owlbear. It’s one of those setting that may well have been someone’s homegame in the years leading up to writing. And it works, it really does, because even if it’s what we expect, there’s enough of this world to learn about, to wander through, from the evolving politic of Monster Slaying to the factions that vie for control of each settlement. And moreover, it works because it sits alongside the core joke of the premise: that a party of mercenaries is a Band, and a Band is a music group, and what if one was like the other.

The Bands of Kings of the Wyld go on tours (of monster slaying), they take gigs (are payed to slay monsters), they have bookers (mon– no, these are pretty much the same within the above parameters). A paper-thin veneer separates the sword-slinging heroes from positions in a rock group: from the barbarian with an axe filling the guitarist roll (capable of ‘soloing’) to the dual short-sword-wielding rogue nicknamed “Skulldrummer.” (Admittedly the one roll I can’t quite figure out is the Bards, here presented as tag-along storytellers who spread the word of their attached Band but are notorious for dying one after the other. Are these reporters? Groupies? Purely a joke on how the D&D class doesn’t work in the context of the story’s gimmick?)

Within those rolls however, stand characters that are are dynamic and interesting, each a different vision of what happens after the adventure ends. The happy ending, the slow decline, the long obsession of an unfinished arc. Watching them all grow, again, together, and reignite dynamics from their youth is a genuine delight. It’s interesting to see characters like this already grown up, to note in what ways they can change and how set they are already. Fiction is often so focussed on the young, fantasy especially with its farmboys and teen assassins and so on, so its fascinating to see a story so focussed on oldness: on aches and pains, on fatherhood, on missing glory days. In many ways though, Kings of the Wyld is about youth anyway. About the rash decisions we make when we’re trying to prove something to our parents, about the traumas that define us forever, about who we decide to be at each stage in our life.

It’s a surprisingly deep tale for one who’s protagonist is named after Eric Clapton and which features a cannibal tribe. There’s some really beautiful prose mixed in there too, stuff that really makes you stop and think.

Also, hey, I said I’d review every book I read this year, but I procrastinate, and I’m like four books behind now. So hopefully I’ll put out a few of these in a row over the next couple weeks while the memories are still kind of fresh, and once I’m caught up I’ll try to be better about the habit. (You know, for all the nobody reading these)