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Wrath of Kings
ebook
First published April 1, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 18, 2021
Only my friends know my deep dark secret, but I guess I’ll come clean about it right here on the internet.
I love to paint fantasy miniatures for the ostensible use of playing tactics-based games across a carefully constructed miniature landscape.
I never actually play the game, mind you. No one else I know is into t his hobby, so I paint the miniatures and I learn the rules of the game, and then they just sit in my garage or in my crawlspace. I’ve built an entire ruined city-scape with tiny dilapidated buildings, multiple levels, and an toxic green river running into a sewer drain with bridges over top.
Like me, I imagine a lot of people buy these miniature games and never actually play them – and so the games get discontinued and the manufacturer stops supporting them. This happened to my favorite miniature games like Mordheim and Star Wars Imperial Assault. It also happened to a game called Wrath of Kings by a company called Cool Mini Or Not.
I didn’t discover the game until it was already out of print, but I got some really great looking miniatures for very little money and so – knowing full well that I would NEVER find anyone to play the game with – I bought some more of them. I’ve got a little army from a faction called Teknes (steam punk robots and hulking pig-people and menacing little men riding on two-legged wolf creatures).
One of the things about these games is that they don’t just sell you little plastic men and a rule book – they create a whole mythology around it (the Warhammer people have been at this for decades). The little men you control have a history and a society and their own ambitions and motivations. It’s part of how you get players to buy in.
This novel was written for this express purpose. Offered for free in PDF and MOBI formats on the Wrath of Kings website, it’s not intended to be great literature. It’s intended to introduce players of the game (or would-be players) to the various factions and to introduce them to the flavor of the world their tiny plastic men will be fighting over. This doesn’t mean that it can’t be a great book. There are people who absolutely LOVE the books set in the Warhammer and Warhammer 40K universes (the most popular miniature games that have spawned whole libraries of paperbacks and video games).
This isn’t a great book, though its not so bad.
The problem is that it aspires to make players care about five warring factions – each with their own monsters and leaders and politics and ambitions – over the course of 215 pages. We have to meet a handful of important characters from each f the houses (the Goritisi, whose strict caste system is peopled with vampires and werewolves – House Teknes with its technomancy and porcine union workers – Shael Han, the most poorly fleshed out faction in the novel with its spymasters and vaguely samurai-like guards, Hadross, who are like the ugly cousins of the Little Mermaid gang [and who bost the best character in the book] – and Nasier who wear masks infused with demon souls to boost their strength and martial prowess).
Kelly does an admirable job creating characters that we really come to like, especially Ooroth, the Hadross squid-man who drinks too much, yearns for the company of a non-monstrous female companion, and helps little girls find lost kittens. Kelly also successfully creates the air of distrust between nations and conjures a distinct tone for each kingdom. The action scenes do a good job of highlighting the unique strengths and powers of the creatures fighting for each faction (heavily armored crab-men running amok and an unstoppable giant pig-monster battling a host of werewolves). More than action, though, the story remains focuses on political intrigue in a neutral city where all the factions have sent ambassadors to talk peace.
One key weakness was unavoidable. This book was created to make people want to take up one side or another in conflict amongst the nations it details. Therefore, the conflict presented in the book couldn’t come to a full resolution. Indeed, - and I guess this is a spoiler – the book ends by intensifying the conflict. The book exists for the same reason Transformers and GI Joe cartoons existed when I was a kid: to sell toys. To do so, it has to create a world you want to live in outside the story itself (as your Cobra Commander toy kidnaps your stuffed animals or your Optimus Prime doll battles your plastic Foot Clan soldiers even after your cartoons have neded).
The book was fun. It was worth the read. It does make want to play with the toys it was meant to sell. I think that makes it a success, even if it doesn’t make it a ‘good book’.
I love to paint fantasy miniatures for the ostensible use of playing tactics-based games across a carefully constructed miniature landscape.
I never actually play the game, mind you. No one else I know is into t his hobby, so I paint the miniatures and I learn the rules of the game, and then they just sit in my garage or in my crawlspace. I’ve built an entire ruined city-scape with tiny dilapidated buildings, multiple levels, and an toxic green river running into a sewer drain with bridges over top.
Like me, I imagine a lot of people buy these miniature games and never actually play them – and so the games get discontinued and the manufacturer stops supporting them. This happened to my favorite miniature games like Mordheim and Star Wars Imperial Assault. It also happened to a game called Wrath of Kings by a company called Cool Mini Or Not.
I didn’t discover the game until it was already out of print, but I got some really great looking miniatures for very little money and so – knowing full well that I would NEVER find anyone to play the game with – I bought some more of them. I’ve got a little army from a faction called Teknes (steam punk robots and hulking pig-people and menacing little men riding on two-legged wolf creatures).
One of the things about these games is that they don’t just sell you little plastic men and a rule book – they create a whole mythology around it (the Warhammer people have been at this for decades). The little men you control have a history and a society and their own ambitions and motivations. It’s part of how you get players to buy in.
This novel was written for this express purpose. Offered for free in PDF and MOBI formats on the Wrath of Kings website, it’s not intended to be great literature. It’s intended to introduce players of the game (or would-be players) to the various factions and to introduce them to the flavor of the world their tiny plastic men will be fighting over. This doesn’t mean that it can’t be a great book. There are people who absolutely LOVE the books set in the Warhammer and Warhammer 40K universes (the most popular miniature games that have spawned whole libraries of paperbacks and video games).
This isn’t a great book, though its not so bad.
The problem is that it aspires to make players care about five warring factions – each with their own monsters and leaders and politics and ambitions – over the course of 215 pages. We have to meet a handful of important characters from each f the houses (the Goritisi, whose strict caste system is peopled with vampires and werewolves – House Teknes with its technomancy and porcine union workers – Shael Han, the most poorly fleshed out faction in the novel with its spymasters and vaguely samurai-like guards, Hadross, who are like the ugly cousins of the Little Mermaid gang [and who bost the best character in the book] – and Nasier who wear masks infused with demon souls to boost their strength and martial prowess).
Kelly does an admirable job creating characters that we really come to like, especially Ooroth, the Hadross squid-man who drinks too much, yearns for the company of a non-monstrous female companion, and helps little girls find lost kittens. Kelly also successfully creates the air of distrust between nations and conjures a distinct tone for each kingdom. The action scenes do a good job of highlighting the unique strengths and powers of the creatures fighting for each faction (heavily armored crab-men running amok and an unstoppable giant pig-monster battling a host of werewolves). More than action, though, the story remains focuses on political intrigue in a neutral city where all the factions have sent ambassadors to talk peace.
One key weakness was unavoidable. This book was created to make people want to take up one side or another in conflict amongst the nations it details. Therefore, the conflict presented in the book couldn’t come to a full resolution. Indeed, - and I guess this is a spoiler – the book ends by intensifying the conflict. The book exists for the same reason Transformers and GI Joe cartoons existed when I was a kid: to sell toys. To do so, it has to create a world you want to live in outside the story itself (as your Cobra Commander toy kidnaps your stuffed animals or your Optimus Prime doll battles your plastic Foot Clan soldiers even after your cartoons have neded).
The book was fun. It was worth the read. It does make want to play with the toys it was meant to sell. I think that makes it a success, even if it doesn’t make it a ‘good book’.
April 23, 2014
Few books are able to pull off intrigue in a high-fantasy setting, but I think overall Eric Kelly did a very good job at it. He was able to give the feeling and depth to the characters, and each had their motivation for doing what they did in response to politics. I especially enjoyed the character, Ooroth, and how he cared about a young girl and her cat that he helped.
The only reason I didn't give the novel 5 stars is because it was a bit hard to track who said what through out the novel, and there were also at least 4 or 5 chapters where the perspective changed with out any sort of chapter or section breaks.
The only reason I didn't give the novel 5 stars is because it was a bit hard to track who said what through out the novel, and there were also at least 4 or 5 chapters where the perspective changed with out any sort of chapter or section breaks.
June 10, 2015
Pleasantly surprised by this book. Being a freebie during a game release, I didn't have high hopes. Come to find out, I couldn't put it down. Good mix of action and intrigue.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews