The Kingless Land
The Band of Four series, Book 1
Ed Greenwood
Tor
Fiction, Fantasy
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Once, the land of Aglirta knew peace and prosperity under noble kings. Now, it is a land of strife and fear, with feuding barons and petty, power-mad wizards and monsters and thieves prowling the wilds. Bardic songs tell of four legendary stones, the Dwaerindim stones, long lost to the ages, whose return would summon the Sleeping King from his hidden sanctuary and return Aglirta to its former glory... but such stones could also wake the evil Serpent, enemy of the light, and also place untold destructive power in the hands of the wrong men. Fortunately, in centuries none have located so much as a scrap of a genuine lead on any one of the stones. Unfortunately, nothing lost can stay lost forever...
The towering warrior Hawkril and clever little thief Craer were once loyal servants of the "Golden Griffin" Baron Blackgult, a proud and relatively decent baron of the broken land. But foul Baron Silvertree cast the man down and took his lands. Now Hawkril and Craer, like so many bearing the Griffin's badge, have been forced into an outlaw life, scraping a meager existence from the land. Their latest plan is a desperately audacious one, but desperate they have become: they plan to sneak into the keep of Silvertree himself, or rather the tower of his rarely-seen daughter Embra, known as the Lady of Jewels for her gem-encrusted gowns - so many gowns she surely wouldn't miss one if it were to go missing in the dead of night. When Lady Embra catches them in the act, proving herself to be a powerful sorceress to boot, the pair are sure they're done for... until she demands their help to flee her cruel and power-mad father and his nefarious plans for her. It's an offer Hawkril and Craer literally cannot refuse. In their flight, pursued by the powers of the baron's three squabbling wizards, they cross paths with the shapeshifting healer Sarasper, who has his own price for helping them escape: he has been given a vision by the god of the Great Oak, to seek out the Dwaerindim and wake the Sleeping King. Thus, the Band of Four is born. Together, they will become the stuff of legends... assuming they survive.
REVIEW: There's something to be said for a book that knows exactly what it is and revels in it without pretense. The Kingless Land is the quintessential post-Tolkien, Dungeons and Dragons-esque epic fantasy adventure. Everyone's a warrior, thief, bard, baron, mage, or priest, the world's barely deeper than the paper the map is drawn on (and the characters little deeper than that), the characters careen from one life-and-death fight or flight to another with barely a pause between for a healing potion or magical regeneration, and if you look too hard for logic in the magic system or plot you'll probably be very disappointed, but Greenwood is clearly enjoying himself, and it's an entertaining ride for the most part if you don't expect too much from it.
At some point, though, I did find myself wanting a little more than that. Numerous side characters get introduced for no apparent reason but to pad out page count and squeeze in more scheming and action sequences and general lurking, which too often went nowhere. I also found myself almost snickering aloud at the juvenile mentality evident behind several aspects; repetitive side interruptions portrayed naked young women recruited into the evil serpent cult by being bitten by venomous serpents on the breast (after which they were compelled to kiss the snake on the head, to the snake's evident pleasure... make of that what you will), and the lone female cast member (who wasn't acting out that particular fetish) is repeatedly ogled by the three men she travels with, and even at one point indulges in a hot tub soak with all three, while the author can't quite bring himself to clarify if their relationship is "just friends" or not, sort of like a boy who has just started noticing that not all girls have cooties and some of them might be kind of interesting but isn't quite ready to take the next mental step, despite generic crude references being part of their in-party banter. (The only "adult" relations depicted, snake fondlers aside, were somewhat vague instances with the abused "love chamber" slaves of the cruel Baron Silvertree. So... yeah, make of those dynamics what you will, I suppose...) The story as a whole becomes a big, tumbling ball of violent party encounters and monsters and whizz-bang wizardry and almost stumbling into quest goals, before coming to what's not so much a conclusion as a pause before the next phase of the Band of Four's adventures and Aglirta's future. I was honestly surprised when I saw that it was published in 2001; this is the kind of tale I would've expected back in the 1980's or 1990's.
As I said at the start of the review, there is something to be said for The Kingless Land in that it never pretends to be more than it is, and it does deliver on its promise of near-nonstop action and adventure and magic and danger. If that's all one wants out of a tale, it's enjoyable enough on that level. I have encountered worse, but I've also encountered (and, to be honest, have come to expect) better in the genre.
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