I had pretty much given up on fantasy novels when this came along. I read a million of them in the 70's and 80's, but burned out on endless repetitions of, "The humble Chosen One is the only person who can defeat the Dark Foozle", and these days, the fantasy choices all seem to be either Harry Potter clones, grimdark slaughterhouses of "Everything is awful", or thinly-disguised romances between women and kilted Scottish werewolves. Thus, this was like mana from heaven. 
 Kings of the Wyld has a feel similar to the Ready Player One of fantasy - It's a big, gloriously nostalgic throwback to heroes like Fafhrd & the Grey Mouser, as seen through the lens of 70's and 80's stadium rock. Yep, you read that right, this is a sprawling airbrushed custom van of a book that plays to Rush's "The Necromancer" on a maxed-out Quadrophonic stereo. It's a book where you can hear Elmer Bernstein's "Den" theme from Heavy Metal playing in your head through nearly every chapter. I was almost expecting someone to pull a guitar from a stone and strum a power chord to transform it into a glowing sword, while Taarna circled on her bird overhead. If you ever played D&D in the basements and garages of that era, odds are you'll love it. 
 In this fantasy world, adventuring groups are the rock stars, traveling the lands to fight monsters and ride waves of popularity from town to town and bardic epic to tavern song. They have names like The Screaming Eagles and Sisters of Steel. The band Saga was once the biggest and baddest of them all, but that was 19 years ago and they've long since broken up and gone on to real jobs and "normal" lives. When a former bandmate turns up on Clay Cooper's doorstep pleading for help to rescue his daughter from a besieged city, these retired heroes have to see if they can recapture their old magic now that creaking knees and middle-aged spread have crept in. 
 It is, however, way, *way* more than just another "Old guys proving they've still got it" story... It's a heavy metal amble through all the Uriah Heep imagery you can remember. It's a straight-out D&D story about a party that consists of a fighter, a thief, a paladin, a barbarian, and a magic-user. It's a 20 minute prog-metal Rush song rendered into a book. 
 It's a blast.