Ontario librarian Ed Greenwood is already famous for creating The Forgotten Realms, a hugely popular fantasy role-playing game. He’s now branched out into sword-and-sorcery fiction, and The Kingless Land is his first book of a new series about the mythical land of Aglirta.
Aglirta has become an outlaw state torn apart by warring barons. A couple of outlaw soldiers from one baron’s army decide to break into their enemy’s castle and steal one of his daughter’s famous jewelled gowns. The castle turns out to be enchanted and the daughter a prisoner in it, and the soldiers end up helping her escape. On the way out, they encounter a reclusive healer who convinces them the only way to stop the lady’s maniacal father is to find the legendary Worldstones, which will rouse the sleeping king of Aglirta and restore order to the land. The group dub themselves The Band of Four and set off to find the stones, pursued by the baron’s evil wizards and a cult of snake-worshipping weirdos, who all want the stones for darker purposes.
Characterization is not Greenwood’s strong point – the Band of Four are instantly recognizable character types bound by the conventions of role-playing games, which weakens them in book form. In a game, the players supply the personal eccentricities for each character – in a novel, it’s up to the author.
What The Kingless Land lacks in character development, it makes up for in supercharged action and attention to detail that will undoubtedly satisfy Greenwood’s core audience. There’s more than enough arcane magic, pumped-up swordplay, and gory injury for the most dedicated gamer. Greenwood does have a gift for creating vivid images of the fantastic – stone walls coming to life, exotic monsters, floating surveillance eyeballs – and manages to inject a bit of comic relief here and there. The Kingless Land doesn’t break any new ground in fantasy fiction, but it will certainly please Greenwood’s legion of fans.
The Kingless Land: A Tale of the Band of Four