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The premise of Kings of the Wyld is this: in a secondary world fantasy setting, mercenary bands are treated like rock bands. They have groupies, tour managers, merchandise. They pack stadiums. The legendary ones have greatest hits compilations.
Saga — once the greatest band in the world, now twenty years retired, fat and old and rusting — needs to get back together one more time. One of their members’ daughters is trapped in a city under siege by a monstrous horde. They’re going to go get her.
That’s it. That’s the whole thing. It is, somehow, one of the best fantasy novels of the last decade.
What Makes It Work
The obvious answer is the conceit — merging epic fantasy with classic rock tropes is clever, and Eames executes it with real wit. The band dynamic, the callbacks to legendary past gigs, the sense of ageing warriors who were once genuinely extraordinary and are now considerably more ordinary — it all works.
But the reason Kings of the Wyld is great rather than just clever is the characters.
Clay Cooper — the narrator, the shield-man, the one who knocks on his old friend’s door on a grey morning and says they need to go. He’s not the most dramatic character. He’s the most human one. His love for his wife and daughter, his fear, his loyalty, his awareness that this will probably kill him — all of it makes him the emotional anchor of a book that could have settled for being a rollicking adventure.
Golden Gabe — Clay’s oldest friend, the band’s frontman, charismatic and broken and desperately in love with a daughter who barely knows him. The relationship between Clay and Gabe is the heart of the novel.
The rest of Saga — Moog the wizard, Matrick the reformed thief-king, Ganelon the monstrous fighter — each get their moments, and each are more than their archetypes.
The Tone
Eames gets the tonal balance exactly right. Kings of the Wyld is frequently very funny — the rock band riffs, the mercenary-celebrity culture, the monsters played for absurdity — but it never lets the comedy undermine the genuine emotion underneath. When the book needs to be serious it is, and the serious moments hit harder because of the lightness surrounding them.
The action sequences are also excellent. Clay fights with a shield rather than a weapon and Eames choreographs his battles with the same care and originality he brings to everything else.
The Sequel
Bloody Rose (2018) follows a completely new band in the same world. It’s excellent in its own right but has a different energy — darker, more melancholy, more interested in the costs of the life Saga glamourises. Read Kings of the Wyld first, then decide how you feel about more.
Should You Read It?
If you want a book that will make you laugh, make you tear up slightly in the final act, and remind you why you fell in love with fantasy in the first place — yes. Unreservedly.
Rating: 5/5
Rated 4.5 Stars on Amazon. Buy Kings of the Wyld here.
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Check out Sunset In the East — a mind-bending short story collection from Ben Luxon.
