The Second in the acclaimed Alfred the Boy King Series More action, more intensity, more races and monsters!
Aflred the Boy King series offers kids and kids-at-heart an adventurous fantasy world, with epic battles, and noble causes worth fighting for!
Alfred is now King of the Westfold and Gorbogal the Witch has focusd her eye on his little kingdom. With too few knights, a decrepit Keep, what is a boy king to do?
First, he magically teleports back home to be with his mother and learn more about the Dark Ages and medieval society. He also gets infatuated with a computer game called “The Underrealms” where he mines blocks and realizes that his kingdom will need to start mining and acquiring their own steel.
However in his stay at home, much has changed in the Westfold. Upon his return he unfolds dastardly plans by Telehistine Merchants who are ruining his kingdom. His knights have lost faith, the girlarchers and spearboys have been disbanded, and the new trade deal with the greedy merchants has left his kingdom weaker!
And to top it all off, Gorbogal has laid her plans of invasion by a mightier force than before! Ooops, too much as been said already!!
Highlighted comments of the Series so
Great for fans of Rick Riordan.
To me, it brings to mind such classics as Narnia and The Castle in the Attic.
If I would describe this book in one word it would be Magical.
I was drawn in by the fast paced action and intrigued by the vivid details.
Great detail in the combat exchanges from clashes and gashes to fears and tears.
Ron Smorynski is an army brat, whose mom is Korean and his dad American-Polish. He grew up in White Sands Missile Range & Las Cruces, New Mexico. He transferred to UCLA as a fine artist, then in Los Angeles, as a struggling painter, discovered the new artform of CG animation. One of the first games and cinematics he experienced was Warcraft! He taught himself CG animation and got his first real job at Blizzard Entertainment working on cinematics for Diablo I.
Ron went on to work at various CG studios like Blur Studios. He worked as lead battle animator for the notoriously failed "Conan the Red Nails" animated feature. He always had a bug for indie work though. His animations and solo movie project can be seen on his youtube channel, Worldofgrim. His solo CG feature film got into the Hollywood Film Festival and was represented by two separate sales agents at the American Film Market in 2007 and 2008. After the mortgage crisis of 2008 his dreams of an indie cg producer got dashed against a proverbial rock. Though he continued on a 2nd feature, his daughters became his main focus. He ended up homeschooling them in their pre-teen to teen years. One even went on to win Rachel Ray's Kids Cook-Off on Foodnetwork. Ron had to sacrifice his 15 minutes of fame on that show! And he had to eat a lot of really really REALLY good food.
During all this, he always loved writing and has nearly a dozen unpublished novels and role playing game books. He even went as far as to publish Alfred, the Boy Who Would Be King, unedited, in 2006. Well in 2015, his sister by chance found the self-published book collecting dust and decided to read it. She saw how badly it was written! Yet she loved the story. So she tortured her younger brother for a couple of years of harrowing editing. Ron had finally succumbed to maturity, professionalism and EDITING. Not only did she use her spare time to edit, after it was all done and polished, and loving it so, she decided to hire an editor on her own dime to help Ron really get it right. Ron has now committed himself to the project and the professionalism needed to make a great story.
“Yes Alfred, that is it. I love you. I love you so much. And I am worried. I, we, your father and I, and even Tirnalth – we chose this life for you. We fled for you. A great magic was unleashed to help us, for you Alfred. It helped us escape a world fallen to darkness”
Alfred and the Underworld is the second volume of Alfred: The Boy King series by author Ron Smorynski. Published on November 9th, 2017, this book continues Alfred’s journey as the King of Westfold. After spending some time back with his mother in the human world researching and preparing, he goes back to his people. Things are not going well, and Alfred has a lot of work to do to help his people get back on their feet and defend themselves from the darkness that surrounds them. In this book, Smorynski continues not only with this adventure-filled story but has continued to build up his fantasy world. Alfred encounters several new magical creatures, both good and bad around his kingdom. We also get a further building of the magical system and who has access to magic, which adds to the world and what is possible within it. Another interesting aspect was the history and politics that took a forefront position in this book. We are given a better grasp of the world outside of Alfred’s little kingdom. There are more players in the game now some that could be allies and some that have allied themselves with the evil in the land. I really enjoyed that in this book we get to see different perspectives. While mostly told from Alfred’s point of view, we also get sneak peaks into both his mother's mind and the enemies Alfred, and his people are fighting. This was interesting because these other characters are privy to information Alfred does not have access to and helps build the intrigue of the story. I particularly liked the chapters focused on Alfred’s mother. Through the excitement of Alfred building up his kingdom and the thrill of preparing for battle and defeating enemies, the mother is a reminder of a big picture and a deeper mystery. Throughout the first book we were given pieces of the life that she left behind when she brought Alfred to our world, and slowly those pieces are coming together. I greatly enjoyed this book and am excited about the third book in the series Alfred and the Quest of the Knights. Alfred and the Underworld was an exciting, fun, and interesting story on its own, but it also set up nicely for the next installment. Between the big bad that is Gorbogal the witch and the truth bomb that was dropped on Alfred in the last sentence as a cliffhanger, this book as left me desperately waiting for more.