2017.10.?
I check the book out of the library, and place it prominently on my main bookshelf. I do not touch it.
2017.11.21
About once a week I see the book, feel a pang of guilt for not reading it, while I continue to re-new it.
Tonight I finally open it. Read the first 3 chapters. Its good. Draws you right in. Paints the world and characters fast, and if you're even a little familiar with D&D, the world feels comfortably familiar.
I'm not quite invested yet, but I can already feel it starting. The overtly RPG references are coming almost a little too thick and fast, as if the book is overly eager to try and establish its fantasy cred, but its earnestness is excusable in this short attention span age.
2017.12.01
Of course - why didn't I think of it before: geeksploitation. I've been calling it things like Nostalgia Chow, but a new word isn't needed. What else can you call it when a book references half the monsters in the Monster Manual in the first few chapters? Not only is it an exploitation of geek culture, but maybe even a particular era - kind of like Ready Player One was a like a nostalgia and geek exploitation engine, with the 70s/80s module loaded.
Not that I'm complaining, I just wanted to understand. I am the target demographic. I am in the right place.
Now if only I could get started reading again...
2018.01.27
Start over.
2018.01.31
Once I got started it was easy to keep going, until something from the Real World derailed me. After a day my head was still in the book, after two days faltering, after three days almost all inertia lost.
Spoilers coming up.
The band metaphor just keeps on building to the point where its getting hard to ignore. The book cover says "the boys are back in town" (a song from...lookup 1976), the back cover says "it's time to get the band back together" (a fairly old music biz idiom). Mercenary companies are "bands". Merc bands have bookers, or agents, just like music bands. In the band Saga, one of the characters is name Moog, fitting for the mage of the group. Clay Cooper doesn't ring a bell, and "frontman" Gabriel... Peter?
I know William Gibson used a little bit of this metaphor in Neuromancer, naming a few characters and situations after his favorite musicians and songs, but Kings of the Wyld is world building with it. If the references stopped here that would be fine, but they don't, so it maintains a constant level of distraction.
I don't mind the D&D geeksploitation, and I somewhat forgive the classic rock music industry references. I don't mind at all the map at the beginning of the book in the Tolkien map style - its a fitting tribute, actually. But when a character says "the cake was a lie" you are starting to actively annoy your reader. Even if it was an innocent mistake some proof-reader or editor should have told the author that you can't put this phrase here, its wholly owned by an entirely other property and it sticks out unforgivably.
Freddie.... Mercury?
And, halfway through the book, the band is back together.
2018.10.11
Stopped again for months. I have to finish this book this month... its been a year now.
The musical references keep coming, I'm over it, but when internet memes start dropping in ("kill it with fire") its knocks me right out of the story. I'm now convinced the previous meme ("the cake is a lie") was no boating accident.
I really like the friendly troll, but why give him precisely a Jamaican accent? Irie. Really?
I think I've finally got a handle on this book, its just like how I felt when reading the the Hitchhiker's books. There's a good story, good characters, some good dialogue and comedy, but you just have to put up with the author's eccentricities.
2018.10.13
For me reading seems to be a function of inertia. The more I read, the more I can, want, and need to read.
A clear pattern has emerged in this book, the tension is ratcheted one level higher, then release, over and over again. There's not much time to hang out or contemplate, as soon as one problem is resolved the kettle is set to boil again. Not sure how to feel about it, it is just the pattern.
In the last quarter now.
2018.10.18
Done.
*spoilers is always set to ON, but this your last chance*
If you're into fantasy, this is worth reading. It's a bit too self-aware with the non-stop D&D references, and its a bit too pleased with its non-stop music references, but its got heart, and some good action. There's a type of story telling that yanks the tension dial up to 11, then back down to 1, over and over, and its exhausting. Before long though you realize the good guys only gain ground, and everything's probably going to be OK. Despite that, the nearly impossible happy ending feels earned anyway. The way to sequel is left clear, but the prologue closes more doors than it opens.
And then one of my least favorite things happens, there are more and more endings. I love a book that just ends, leaving you to your own thoughts and questions. Acknowledgements, extras, meet the author, Author interview, next installment, plugging some other similar Orbit property - you can only diminish the impact of your story. I am grateful, however, that they color coded the DVD extras section gray, so I didn't think the main story had another chapter to go. That's the only reason I'm not mad about it, so thanks for that.
Reading the extras... the bit of the next book feels like it was written by someone else. A quick look on Amazon and... Bloody Rose (The Band) came out on Aug 28, 2018.
The epilogue left nothing to the imagination, the story of Saga is over. I don't care if the Winter Queen has been resurrected any more than I care about a new set of characters.
Skimming reviews, there is much gushing over the first book, but the second gets but a trickle. Not so much sophomore slump, but second album syndrome. Seems to be darker and less funny. Who knows, maybe I'll like it more. Maybe it can even get close to The Black Company.
