Kings of the Wyld

Book – Kings of the Wyld

Author – Nicholas Eames

Clay Cooper and his band were once the best of the best — the meanest, dirtiest, most feared crew of mercenaries this side of the Heartwyld.

Their glory days long past, the mercs have grown apart and grown old, fat, drunk – or a combination of the three. Then an ex-bandmate turns up at Clay’s door with a plea for help. His daughter Rose is trapped in a city besieged by an enemy one hundred thousand strong and hungry for blood. Rescuing Rose is the kind of mission that only the very brave or the very stupid would sign up for.

It’s time to get the band back together for one last tour across the Wyld. – Goodreads Synopsis

Time To Get The Blog Back Together

It’s been three and a half months. I’ve grown old, fat, and drunk slowly watching the time go by.  I think it’s time I got the old band blog back together. My first tour is finishing this buddy read with Jenna @ Bookmark Your Thoughts!

Much like the last Buddy Read / Collab that I did, there were deadlines set, and deadlines missed. The worst part is that this was a book that I really wanted to read and picked out.  Such is the life of a lazy person I guess.

If you missed it, we both came up with some interesting questions for each other and posted them already. You can find mine here and her’s here.

Humor

The most obvious and best part of this novel is the humor that it brings. The entire story is thought up in a humorous way which really makes it special. You can tell that Eames came up with a funny premise and then executed it perfectly. I mean the whole story is pretty much alluding at a group of people getting a rock band back together. It’s genius.

Outside of the plot structure there is tons of humor in the character interactions. How could it not be funny when you put some old out of shape guys on an epic adventure? (Just the perfect characters that I can relate with! Except without the epic adventure…) Told like an amazing stand-up set, this story has reoccurring jokes that make you feel part of the journey and keeps you quietly laughing to yourself. You don’t really notice the lack of humor in a lot of novels until you really experience it. As a funny-guy juvenile myself, it’s just perfect.

This post would go on forever if I listed all of the funny movements that I loved, but a few of them are Moog’s wizard “tower”, getting robbed multiple times, and risky plans. There is nothing better than a heist gone wrong too!

Good Old Fashioned Fantasy and Adventure

Mixing humor and fantasy is just brilliant, but separately they shine on their own in Kings of the Wyld too. There are a lot of adventure and fantasy elements that are baked into this novel that really tie in the immersion. It’s not just a funny story… there is real depth behind the jokes. The world is built like your typical fantasy world, but with its own unique elements. I loved that the story brought you to many different places in the world of Kings of the Wyld. You really get the feel of adventure when a couple of your old buddies are trying to cross the most dangerous and treacherous path through the mountains. There is also ancient history, religion, elves, monsters, and more!

The only part that started to gripe me was that there may have been too many unique monsters. It almost felt like they were being introduced just to be introduced. That could be a side effect of how well the Witcher series does with beasts and monsters though… (Yes I am still going on about the Witcher…)

Wholesome Characters

It seems that Clay Cooper wins the hearts of everyone who reads Kings of the Wyld, and that stands for good reason. The characters in this novel are well-written, and bring more than just words to the table. Each one of them has a past story that made them who they are today. The humor really rounds out the characters to make them believable as well. These are characters that you will care about, characters you want to root for, and… isn’t that really what it’s all about?

Should I Read It?

Hell yeah you should. If you enjoy humor or fantasy or both, I would definitely buy yourself a copy and enjoy. The fantasy road trip plot is such a fun take on the modern trope. It’s like grown ups or without a paddle… but with weapons! (What could possibly be more fun than that!)

I do have to warn you a bit about the audible version though. If you listen to it during a long car trip, you may think that the narrator sounds a bit like this.

---

 

Instagram