Kingshold (The Wildfire Cycle #1) by D.P. Wooliscroft



"The people of this city have no balls! For hundreds of years, they've let a few rule them when they have the greater numbers. A chieftain on the plains of my home would be challenged and killed for being as useless as these kings and queens. Now, the people are growing balls. Finally."
                                                             - Kingshold

                 Kingshold is a unique story that's more about a city, and an electoral process than it is any particular person. The story begins with a wizard named Jyuth who kills the current (very corrupt) monarchs. With the royal monarchs dead, the wizard decides to introduce the people of Kingshold to the idea of democracy in the hopes of bringing about a brighter, more independent future for all. Any head of house within the kingdom who can come up with enough gold pieces is allowed to vote, and there are plenty of people that want to become future lord protector.

                There are a lot of things to like about this book. Kingshold features a wide range of characters with very different personalities, and the secondary characters were just as entertaining. There are thieves, an assassins guild, magic, animal mind melds, dwarves oh, and did I mention the Juggernaut? Yeah, there's also a pretty awesome stone juggernaut.

"The Juggernaut was a stone dwarf come to life...Carved from one piece of stone, a dwarven warrior in full plate armor, gauntlets and a helm with thin slits for the eyes where two green lights shone. It was a thing of beauty, delicate details etched into the armor, carved chainmail between stone plates flowing like fabric. And though it didn't wield a weapon, the clenched gauntleted fists were as big as wine casks."

               Another thing that this book did really well was craft an entire story around a very politically driven situation. There's some love, family bonding, and coming of age stuff thrown in there too, but 90% of the story focuses on the complications of a city running it's first ever honest election.

"Four weeks from today, when we have the new moon coinciding with the solstice, there shall be an election for lord protector of Edland. All men, women, and other races may stand for election, but the one who receives the most...shall be declared the winner. All heads of household within three leagues of the royal palace shall be able to vote of they present themselves personally to me before the election day and deposit a thousand gold crowns into my safe keeping."

          My only complaint would be about some of the chosen lingo that was used. Alana is this strong, smart, independent character who plays a huge part in keeping the wizard informed and in helping with the election, but she also kicks boys in the "goolies" and compares people to skittles. There are also people that get the boots taken to them, which immediately made me laugh and think of Metalocalypse. Obviously this won't happen with everyone and the majority of people won't find the line funny like I did, but it felt worth mentioning. 

           But honestly all of that was pretty minor. The amount of characters can be a little overwhelming in the beginning and I definitely got confused a time or two, but by the end I had it pretty well figured out. The change over from a monarchy to a democracy isn't an easy one, yet D.P. Wooliscroft does a good job at covering all the bases and imagining how a change like that might go down. Despite the fact that I was occasionally bored by some of the politics and confused at first about who was who, I'm still curious and excited to see what might happen in the next book.

              

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