Customer Reviews

The Kingless Land: Library Edition

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Over forty years of reading fantasy novels, I find they are either: brilliant (very rare), good but flawed (lots of those), and drek. This new Greenwood book is good but flawed. It doesn't try to be anything more than popcorn-and-beer reading, and gives the reader a whumping good ride. Lots of cinematic scenes and blasting action but little touches of characterization here and there that tell us these people are real and we should care about them. I really liked it, and will buy any sequels that appear. Expect the Lord of the Rings, and you'll be disappointed. Expect a really fun read, and this is it.

After about 50 pages, I thought this book was pretty entertaining, but that notion didn't last. While I was reading this I kept getting the urge to go off and play an RPG (role playing game) because that's basically what this book is. A group of four adventurers goes on a few quests and leaves a heap of bodies in their wake. There was way too much carnage per page - the problem isn't that it's violent, but that people are just dying left and right and it doesn't mean anything. There is almost an irreverent attitude towards death. This entire land must get depopulated in a month at the rate things are going in this book. The other main fault I found is that the characters are way too stereotypical - the warrior is dumber than a rock and basically wants to kill everything he doesn't understand. The author also jumps around a lot, often awkwardly. A whole bunch of wizards will get vaporized two pages after being introduced for the first time, and you don't know who they are anyway so you don't care if they died.

On the plus side, the action sequences are entertaining, but you just have to ask yourself why you should care about anyone. I didn't find myself forming any attachments to the characters or hatred for any particular enemies. It's just not a good story, and I don't plan to read the other books in the series.

I am a big fan of the fantasy genre and have read many authors of many different styles. Mr. Greenwood is barely an author. To say there is little plot to his book is an understatement. I used to game with a number of players where one of them kept notes of our gaming session. The next time we came together to game, he would recap what occurred the last time we played. Mr. Greenwood apparently has this down to an art form. His book reads exactly like a D&D gaming session. I can't think of anything more boring than reading about someone else's D&D adventures. This is what it feels like to wade through The Kingless Land. I can summarize the book in one sentence. Action, action, action, minor annoying plot point, action, action, action minor annoying plot point. If you are, say, under the age of 13 and you can suspend your disbelief enough to enjoy a story where the main characters are beaten, brutalized, fried, beaten and brutalized again over a month period, in which they do not sleep or rest, then this book is for you. But for those fans of fantasy that are more discerning, by all means stay away.

If it were possible to give negative stars I would do so for this poorly written farce. I've never read Ed Greenwood before, but he has the MOST ludicrious style of writing-- it's akin to some sort of drunken Shakespearean ramble, the way he throws in "henceforth" "anon" and every other word that makes fantasy readers' eyes roll. It doesn't seem like anyone edited this book, because the sentences don't even make sense. The descriptions are horrible and the way he writes about his female lead sound like a pubescent boy's fantasy (clingly, wet clothes, etc). UGH! I can't even keep the action straight because Greenwood has to use so many adjectives. Greenwood's habit of throwing randomly scary and deadly beasts/perils on our protagonists every other sentence is absurd. I have never read a fantasy book so poorly written and with such a pointless, mindless plot. Books like this give the fantasy genre a bad name. DON'T READ IT!

I thought this book was fair. I wanted to like it, and it had me intrigued enough to skim through the entire thing to figure out what happened in the end, but that's about it. I did not particularly enjoy the author's writing style and all the alliteration (intentional or not) is what finally forced me to skim the book instead of reading it outright. All in all, the only thing I can recommend is that if you're a prospective buyer, sit down in the book store and read a few chapters first - you'll probably get a feeling for whether or not this book is for you right away.

This book is full of action, adventure, and magic, so much that it seems as if it were lifted straight from a D&D campaign. Unfortunately, that doesn't make for a very good book in my opinion. The characters do ridiculous things, seeming at times like they were taken from a 14 year-old's hormone-driven fantasies. It is a fast read--you should be able to finish it in a weekend--and it certainly doesn't require much thought. If that is the kind of book you are looking for then by all means read it, I doubt you will be disappointed. However, there are other books out there that have those qualities (action, adventure, magic) but are much more interesting to read (anything written by David Eddings or Raymond Feist, for example). I gave it two stars because the book isn't unbearable to read, it's just not very interesting. Also, I don't think Mr. Greenwood was trying to write a masterpiece and I imagine it is popular among its target readers.

I have read all of Greenwood's works and this pales in comparison. I just finished reading it and I cannot say that I will get the second one in the series. This novel jumps around far too much and does not give adequate setting on the world and characters. It was getting far to ridiculous when the heros would get blasted, healed, blasted, healed again.... all in matter of a few pages. I hope Greenwood goes back to the drawing board before thinking about expanding this world.

A break from the rich, vibrant land that is the Forgotten Realms, master bard Ed Greenwood pens an entirely new world known as Asmarand. The story of The Kingless Land focuses mainly on Aglirta, also known as, well, the Kingless Land. Named so because of its fragmented baronies which are governed by a dozen or so tyrants, Aglirta is a land mired in hopeful prophecies.

Created uncannily similar to an old fashioned D&D dungeon crawl, The Kingless Land's main protagonists are composed of four intrepid adventurers. The thief (or 'procurer' to be more elegant) Craer, the bladesman (or 'armaragor' in the Aglirtan native tongue) Hawkril, the old healing priest Sarasper, and finally, the esteemed Lady Embra Silvertree. This Band of Four, as they are so uncreatively named, must in the traditional D&D sense, overcome the variety of enemies and seek to fullfil the ancient prophecy.

Ed Greenwood deviates quite a bit here from his prior Forgotten Realms novels. Each of the four main characters has a particular personality that Greenwood describes well and sticks to the end. Craer, for example, has a particular strain of biting humor, which he so vividly utilizes at every turn to poke at his fellow companions and foes alike, while Hawkril fits the stereotypical mold perfectly and acts like a dumb, straight-forward sword-swinger whose favorite words appear to be 'kill' and 'eat'.

The descriptive techniques employed in this novel is also different from Greenwood's prior works. The book is especially gory at times, and Greenwood seems to enjoy painting adjective after bloody adjective to the various limbs and heads and otherwise battered remains of corpses that so liberally populate the story.

The book does have its shortcomings. The movement of the plot is largely superfluous, and some of the various locations on the map seem to earn their names simply for the sake of saying 'The Band went here and there'. Despite Greenwood's attempts to diversify the encounters, many seem repetitive, especially the long stretch of the undead in the first parts of the book. The main female character is also, for long periods of time, deliberately forced by circumstance to somehow remain in one soaking wet gown or another with half her breasts exposed, for better or for worse. This seems to sell her a bit too shallowly.

Despite this, the book is a fast page-turner crammed to the edges with action, and should not take long at all to finish, especially for Greenwood's old fans or those who are familiar with the D&D adventures. While fun, don't expect any heavy, moral-ridden deeper meaning to present itself at the end. This is downright an action fantasy, and Greenwood accomplishes his objective well with a fine blend of blade-bashing, spell-hurling, and biting humor.

-Xiao Zhu

The action is wonderfully written. The magic is mesmorizing. While the plot is nothing new, the way it is woven through the action is spectacular. If you want deep woven mysteries and twisting plots, try this book with caution. However, if you want action and magic and a book you can never put down, this is your ticket.

The Kingless Land is the second Greenwood novel I've read and it suffers from the same failings as Spellfire the first one I tried. They both read like the transcript of a particularly bloody game of Dungeons and Dragons, with the motley group of heroes :-Thief, Mage, Knight and healer; being dumped in a series of relentless confrontations with assorted mystical and mundane foes. Fight follows fight with little rationale or explanation. When you get to a point where you could reasonably expect a breathing space for character building or plot, Greenwood skips it and teleports his hapless crew of good guys directly to the next bone crunching, gut spilling combat scene. It's really a book for the X-box generation, if you want a non stop spell slinging, sword swinging blood bath then this is the book for you. If you want characterisation and plot then there are definitely better authors to be found.
On the back cover Margaret Weiss is quoted as saying:-
"Ed Greenwood is a master of Fantasy adventure world building. His magic and wizardry are wondrous to all".
I can't agree it's generic, derivative and far too frenetic to be really good.