Revisiting Legends of Lone Wolf

After I started my nostalgia-filled binge of the Lone Wolf game books, I decided I'd also revisit the novelization, or at least what I had of it. Being a kid on allowance money at the time I couldn't buy everything I wanted, and at the time I didn't really have a concept of books actually going out of print.

So as it turns out, I only have the first two volumes of Legends of Lone Wolf by Joe Dever and John Grant. The series ran for four installments in the US (though from my understanding the UK's Book 2 was broken into Books 2 and 3 in the US), but ran for twelve in the UK. Eventually, about ten years ago a small publisher actually reprinted them in a set of three omnibuses, but they are once again out of print and the publisher's web presence has disappeared, so they are likely defunct. With the recent passing of John Grant, and Joe Dever's own passing in 2016, I'm afraid it's unlikely we'll see these again unless their estates are active about working something out.

Which is too bad.

It's not that the books are amazing reading, now that I'm older I can better understand why sales were poor enough that the series dropped off here, but there were attempts to better flesh out the world in ways the game books couldn't. And Dever, who seemed to really like other people playing in his world (friends and fans being able to write sanctioned spin-off game books like World of Lone Wolf and Autumn Snow), handed off a lot to John Grant.

Grant builds up a lot of the cosmology of the Lone Wolf series, so we know more about the deities and the inner workings of the Darklords. Things that we can't know from the game books themselves because Lone Wolf has no need to consider them or because he's in no position to know himself. And since Legends of Lone Wolf was written while the Grandmaster series was in production, it's not surprising that a lot of the worldbuilding in Legends ends up being imported into the series proper.

It's possible a lot of this worldbuilding was also Dever's work, but the character Alyss was definitely Grant's creation, and she too was eventually imported into the main series.

Legends also makes a number of changes in perspective since we're no longer trapped within Lone Wolf's point of view. Vonotar, who is a minor recurring villain in the series, is built out as a villain equal to Zagarna, the leader of the Darklords when the story begins. Banedon is expanded into a deuteragonist role and gets tons of page time for his own mission.

Though the game books never present their female characters as less capable than their male counterparts, you're also hard pressed to see one even show up. Legends fixes that with lots of women in all walks of life; from the obvious peasant roles to being sentries in the king's army to Kai Lords in their own right. Most of the random soldiers with speaking roles are still male, but at least it's clear that women can and do fight. (Special nod to the king's clerk who carries on his duties in the strategy meeting while also dealing with the grief of losing his wife on the battlefield. It's a role reversal I didn't expect.)

Okay, so there are these good things. Why didn't Legends of Lone Wolf work?

I think part of the reason is that the overlap between people willing to read Legends and also play the game books was smaller than anticipated. If you already read the game books, why would you want to read someone else's playthrough? The first novel, Eclipse of the Kai, is a prequel, which was a good way to start, so we can see how the series' defining events came to pass, but the second book is weaker when Lone Wolf is going through a series of events that the reader may have already experienced, especially since they don't serve much narrative purpose other than to delay Lone Wolf from getting to Holmgard to warn the king.

It's something that's fun to play—dodging Kraan attacks, encountering the prince, crawling through old ruins—but outside of the game environment, one Lone Wolf segment reads much like another Lone Wolf segment and you probably could rearrange the middle ones without much consequence.

The books don't appear to be targeted to outside readers either. Even though I think they are friendly to new readers from a lore perspective, they're written like a grimdark fantasy story, but published at a YA length. There's a fair amount of blood and guts, descriptions of organs coming out of wounds. Sex is probably the only thing the series draws the line at (though nudity still happens to both genders).

What happens in the story is fine for books aimed at adults, and it's certainly tame compared to more modern grimdark, but YA traditionally deals with issues relevant to teenagers, particularly issues with coming of age, taking on responsibilities, and finding a place in life.

That's not to say that Lone Wolf and Banedon don't have these issues (or even new character Qinefer), and they're teenagers, but they're also in a warzone and their personal issues are not given much space since arguably they have bigger things to worry about. So even though the books star teenagers, and the books' length tilt them towards YA, they don't read like intended for that market. I think if these had been fatter volumes geared towards an older, more general audience, these might have had more success. (Like the Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms books, which have been read by adults and teenagers alike.)

Another thing that bothered me is that some of the additions to Legends just didn't work for me. For instance the expanded cosmology was good, as well as finding out how Vonotar betrayed the Brotherhood of the Crystal Star and joined the Darklords, but after a while I got tired of seeing Vonotar's perspective so much, especially once he got to the point of narratively supplanting Zagarna as the main villain.

All the Zagarna and Vonotar scenes ping-ponged across the map too. Literally, with some scenes out in Sommerland, then back in the Darklands, then out in Sommerland, and back in the Darklands, while at the same time Lone Wolf and Banedon are making desperate travels to the cities that matter most to their missions. While we don't have a timeline for how long it takes them, it should be a couple days at most, and somehow the villains manage a lot of back and forth even allowing for flying mounts.

Also, while I like the addition of women in everyday life and in martial roles, the two new characters don't fit well in the space they're given.

I remembered Qinefer's name before I started my reread, but that fact that was all I could remember probably says how much of an impact she made. And on reread, I'm really not sure what kind of a role she's intended to play. Of course, I only have up to the second volume of the US release, and she's not introduced until halfway, but Alyss groups her with Lone Wolf and Banedon as three people who are critical to the survival of Sommerlund.

As an older reader I do like that Qinefer is a girl of color in a predominately Nordic-themed country, and the fact she's a ridiculously capable fighter feels like a play for more female readers, but narratively her skill and anger at losing her family puts her in the same space as Lone Wolf, except without being a member of the Kai. She's really not good at anything other than fighting, and we know Lone Wolf (by virtue of being Kai and the titular character) is going to be our warrior hero.

I think I might have liked Qinefer if she had a different take on her grief or skill rather than feeling like a lesser female clone of Lone Wolf. For instance, if she'd been an intelligence fighter, coldly killing loads of Giaks through ambushes and traps, that would be a contrast to Lone Wolf's combat rage, which is already used liberally in the same book.

I also really hated her bathing scene. Granted Lone Wolf himself bathes nude in the first book, Qinefer is the one who gets a shapeshifted monster peeping on her. The story remains in her perspective, but the narration about her being comfortable with being seen while also being an underaged teenage girl feels like a level of author perv I didn't need to see.

And saving the best for last, my biggest problem with the Legends series is Alyss. She's author John Grant's pet character, and according to a quotation from him on the Lone Wolf fan wiki, she's appeared in numerous other works of his since because he simply could not get her out of his head.

Alyss is a sort of demigoddess, whose power to influence events is constrained for "reasons" so even though she knows a lot of the potential future, at best she can nudge things one way or another rather than rewriting the timeline to better suit her preferences. This allows her to easily one-up Vonotar every time they meet, but at the same time she can't actually do any lasting damage to him because the future says certain things must come to pass and them's the breaks.

The problem with Alyss is that she takes away so much of the agency of the main characters. Lone Wolf not being in the monastery during the slaughter? That was Alyss's doing. Lone Wolf not returning to the monastery in time after realizing it was under attack? Also Alyss. Banedon not dying on any of multiple occasions? That was Alyss.

She's also really annoying, liking to bluff when she's already ridiculously powerful, and talking to poor Banedon like he's an idiot when he's obviously trying to deal with incredibly unusual circumstances. (And I'm sorry Banedon, I know you're a teenager and have hormones, but you've got terrible taste in women.)

Alyss, though she purports to like people, is just incredibly arrogant and unsympathetic towards those she's helping, and often complains about people not being grateful, but she's doing it anyway. So while everyone else is bleeding guts and trying their best to succeed, Alyss flits about the story making snide comments or doing a magic trick or two before prancing out of sight again.

I didn't like her when I first read Legends and I still don't like her as an adult. Narratively she doesn't serve much of a purpose that couldn't be given to other characters (by allowing them to actually save the day like they're supposed to), so I can't really see any justification for having such a powerful character around. Her restraints only exist because without them Alyss really would single-handedly save the day.

If the other books come back into print again, I'd still read them, but it's just because I'm already a Lone Wolf fan and I want to see what I missed. And even if Banedon has poor taste in women, I really do like following his story since it's one we rarely get to see in the main series.