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King's Quest #2
Kingdom of Sorrow
When an evil enchantment spells an eternal winter for the land of Daventry, King Graham learns that the beautiful queen of the fairies has been kidnapped and must be rescued from the tyrannical King Dunstan to save his kingdom. Original.
325 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1996
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
October 25, 2019
My major gripe - GRAHAM IS NOT A BLONDE. He’s got dark hair! (And muscles for snuggling.)
Anyway, I loved this. It was so much fun to see Graham being Graham - questing, figuring out puzzles, and being the all around good guy he is. I love Graham, especially in the new reboot game. I wanted Valanice in the story more, but she was spunky in the scenes she shared with Graham.
I’m so glad I found this series. The story was a little cheesy, but I will always have a soft spot in my heart for King’s Quest.
Anyway, I loved this. It was so much fun to see Graham being Graham - questing, figuring out puzzles, and being the all around good guy he is. I love Graham, especially in the new reboot game. I wanted Valanice in the story more, but she was spunky in the scenes she shared with Graham.
I’m so glad I found this series. The story was a little cheesy, but I will always have a soft spot in my heart for King’s Quest.
October 6, 2020
Review on second read:
Still three stars, but a fun three stars. Entertaining in its own right, but baffling and uneven in pacing and tone, and Graham spends most of the book complaining about this that and the other, and the proposed infidelity with the fairy queen rubs me entirely the wrong way.
Plus, the insistence that he's blond.
In no universe ever has Graham been blond. You should at least glance at the material you're adapting. I've read more well defined fanfiction than this.
~*~*~*~
Kingdom of Sorrow made me sad. But it's my own fault. I enjoyed the first book in this trilogy just a little too much, and allowed my expectations to rise a little too high for a video game adaptation novel. I should have known better. I had known better: this was the sort of cash grab novel I'd expected the first to be.
It throws away Floating Castle and does its own thing, being set at least a decade before Floating Castle. But it's also exactly like Floating Castle. King's Quest characters have to go save a royal McGuffin to protect Daventry, travel and fantasy tropes happen, there's a big showdown, everyone snarks at each other a bit...yeah, the books are, from a bare bones perspective, identical. But there's a vibrancy to Floating Castle that Kingdom of Sorrow misses. Floating Castle feels like a fun sandbox adventure where the author wanted to just kick off his shoes and enjoy himself in a way that any sensible book would disallow. Kingdom of Sorrow is paper thin, with a tentative duo-author team who didn't seem to play the games they're writing about (...blond...graham....?) and didn't care to push any barriers. It never takes on the video game motif that Floating Castle attempted to do with items and puzzles. This is Plain Jane Fantasy, and you could swap the KQ names for any original characters and get the same results.
The opening is fine. Giving Valanice more personality is always appreciated, and her scenes were fun (once you got to them: reading about Graham's wardrobe is NOT appealing). The fast-falling snow wrecking Daventry castle is interesting.
The fairy names are dumb and full of unnecessary Fantasy Apostrophes. The Yoda language of the imps is unnecessarily distracting (tho, to be fair, it *does* have a pay-off scene). Scenes from Ahi's perspective are tension-wrecking detours. The big scenes are broken up with Graham whining about how tired or hungry he is. Every other page seems to be him wishing he had something to eat.
Speaking of. Graham is why you're reading this. It's why I'm reading this. As this is the second in a trilogy, even if different authors are in control, you're going to make comparisons, and this Graham is more fuddly and weak than in Floating Castle. Possibly it's a case of character perspective: in Floating Castle we saw a confident, strong king with diplomacy and kindness in spades--but it was from Alexander's perspective, and he respected his father immensely. Now that we're in Graham's head, we get to see his hesitations and fears more personally, and it makes him feel weaker. Which wouldn't necessarily be a problem and would in fact be kind of interesting to play with. ESPECIALLY considering the interview I read that said Roberta Williams was so defensive of Graham's macho-buff-unflappable-personality in the video games that she refused to let his voice actor do any proper emoting for fear of hurting that vision. So, a weaker Graham should be really neat and new, especially in the '90s at the height of the series' popularity. But this Graham...doesn't do anything for most of the book.
This book is *excellent* at setting a scene. It finds just the right level of tension that could, if pushed, become breathless and delightful. It makes the fairies leer ominously at Valanice's beauty as though they're going to steal her. It has giant spiders crawling out of the darkness and the thorn trees keening gently for its meal to sing just one more song. It yanks Graham out of bed and ties him up and throws him into a pit. But then this book lets every scene fizzle out, and either nothing happens (Valanice goes home--nothing happens at all), someone else solves the problem (the bard sings and the spiders are like, "Hey. Cool. We won't eat you I guess") or Graham doesn't use his wits or skills or fancy items (*someone else* unties him, and then he just...runs away). Basically, every scene for the first 160ish pages lacks payoff. Every moment falls completely flat. The other shoe will never drop. And it's mostly through Graham's lack of action, I think, that the tension evaporates. Until the yeti takes Graham into the court and forces him to rely on his own wits, alone, in one location so he can't run very far.
The yeti literally drags the king into his own book.
Once Graham is in the court in the glass mountains, the book spins on its heel and does something miraculous. The authors no longer have to think desperately of tiny scenes to support a long, boring walk to some unknown location. Instead, the book becomes small and contained and suddenly *fun,* saving it from the single star rating it deserved. Graham is forced to approach problems from new angles (including from the ceiling at one point; how's that for a fresh angle). The sass increases. The characters face more real perils, with higher stakes. Emotions run at least a fraction above ground level. Graham uses his wits to escape a larger variety of dangers. The balance between Quest characters and Original characters feels more stable when Graham's allowed to do things himself. The balance of comedy and drama that the series seems to thrive upon is strong in the second half or so.
It never gets anywhere above mediocre, but, darn it, I paid $60 for this lame out of print paperback and I'm gonna ENJOY IT.
But. Why is Graham blond. How dare. I feel personally offended on the royal hairdresser's behalf.
(Also: if you're going to try and mildly propose some infidelity with Ahi at the end with her kissing the king and suggesting that he stay with her forever, the very least you can do is give Graham a reunion scene with Valanice. She deserves better than that.)
Check my glowing review of The Floating Castle here.
And my review of the next book, See No Weevil, here.
Still three stars, but a fun three stars. Entertaining in its own right, but baffling and uneven in pacing and tone, and Graham spends most of the book complaining about this that and the other, and the proposed infidelity with the fairy queen rubs me entirely the wrong way.
Plus, the insistence that he's blond.
In no universe ever has Graham been blond. You should at least glance at the material you're adapting. I've read more well defined fanfiction than this.
~*~*~*~
Kingdom of Sorrow made me sad. But it's my own fault. I enjoyed the first book in this trilogy just a little too much, and allowed my expectations to rise a little too high for a video game adaptation novel. I should have known better. I had known better: this was the sort of cash grab novel I'd expected the first to be.
It throws away Floating Castle and does its own thing, being set at least a decade before Floating Castle. But it's also exactly like Floating Castle. King's Quest characters have to go save a royal McGuffin to protect Daventry, travel and fantasy tropes happen, there's a big showdown, everyone snarks at each other a bit...yeah, the books are, from a bare bones perspective, identical. But there's a vibrancy to Floating Castle that Kingdom of Sorrow misses. Floating Castle feels like a fun sandbox adventure where the author wanted to just kick off his shoes and enjoy himself in a way that any sensible book would disallow. Kingdom of Sorrow is paper thin, with a tentative duo-author team who didn't seem to play the games they're writing about (...blond...graham....?) and didn't care to push any barriers. It never takes on the video game motif that Floating Castle attempted to do with items and puzzles. This is Plain Jane Fantasy, and you could swap the KQ names for any original characters and get the same results.
The opening is fine. Giving Valanice more personality is always appreciated, and her scenes were fun (once you got to them: reading about Graham's wardrobe is NOT appealing). The fast-falling snow wrecking Daventry castle is interesting.
The fairy names are dumb and full of unnecessary Fantasy Apostrophes. The Yoda language of the imps is unnecessarily distracting (tho, to be fair, it *does* have a pay-off scene). Scenes from Ahi's perspective are tension-wrecking detours. The big scenes are broken up with Graham whining about how tired or hungry he is. Every other page seems to be him wishing he had something to eat.
Speaking of. Graham is why you're reading this. It's why I'm reading this. As this is the second in a trilogy, even if different authors are in control, you're going to make comparisons, and this Graham is more fuddly and weak than in Floating Castle. Possibly it's a case of character perspective: in Floating Castle we saw a confident, strong king with diplomacy and kindness in spades--but it was from Alexander's perspective, and he respected his father immensely. Now that we're in Graham's head, we get to see his hesitations and fears more personally, and it makes him feel weaker. Which wouldn't necessarily be a problem and would in fact be kind of interesting to play with. ESPECIALLY considering the interview I read that said Roberta Williams was so defensive of Graham's macho-buff-unflappable-personality in the video games that she refused to let his voice actor do any proper emoting for fear of hurting that vision. So, a weaker Graham should be really neat and new, especially in the '90s at the height of the series' popularity. But this Graham...doesn't do anything for most of the book.
This book is *excellent* at setting a scene. It finds just the right level of tension that could, if pushed, become breathless and delightful. It makes the fairies leer ominously at Valanice's beauty as though they're going to steal her. It has giant spiders crawling out of the darkness and the thorn trees keening gently for its meal to sing just one more song. It yanks Graham out of bed and ties him up and throws him into a pit. But then this book lets every scene fizzle out, and either nothing happens (Valanice goes home--nothing happens at all), someone else solves the problem (the bard sings and the spiders are like, "Hey. Cool. We won't eat you I guess") or Graham doesn't use his wits or skills or fancy items (*someone else* unties him, and then he just...runs away). Basically, every scene for the first 160ish pages lacks payoff. Every moment falls completely flat. The other shoe will never drop. And it's mostly through Graham's lack of action, I think, that the tension evaporates. Until the yeti takes Graham into the court and forces him to rely on his own wits, alone, in one location so he can't run very far.
The yeti literally drags the king into his own book.
Once Graham is in the court in the glass mountains, the book spins on its heel and does something miraculous. The authors no longer have to think desperately of tiny scenes to support a long, boring walk to some unknown location. Instead, the book becomes small and contained and suddenly *fun,* saving it from the single star rating it deserved. Graham is forced to approach problems from new angles (including from the ceiling at one point; how's that for a fresh angle). The sass increases. The characters face more real perils, with higher stakes. Emotions run at least a fraction above ground level. Graham uses his wits to escape a larger variety of dangers. The balance between Quest characters and Original characters feels more stable when Graham's allowed to do things himself. The balance of comedy and drama that the series seems to thrive upon is strong in the second half or so.
It never gets anywhere above mediocre, but, darn it, I paid $60 for this lame out of print paperback and I'm gonna ENJOY IT.
But. Why is Graham blond. How dare. I feel personally offended on the royal hairdresser's behalf.
(Also: if you're going to try and mildly propose some infidelity with Ahi at the end with her kissing the king and suggesting that he stay with her forever, the very least you can do is give Graham a reunion scene with Valanice. She deserves better than that.)
Check my glowing review of The Floating Castle here.
And my review of the next book, See No Weevil, here.
December 31, 2022
I chose this for the "light and fun" month in an annual reading challenge. I grew up with the King's Quest games and enjoyed the first novel. I really like the idea of getting to know the characters more, even if it's not canonical. This book was paced well--I enjoyed the characters as they were gradually introduced, the obstacles along the way, the planning required to accomplish the big task, the twists and turns that took, and the continuation of memorable plot points after the climax. Shallan was a fun character that was used just the right amount--he was fine as a one-dimensional character, but he could have gotten old if he was present for any longer. In addition, the writing itself was quite decent. I don't necessarily expect a lot from a novel based on a computer game, but it could actually stand on its own. Not a classic, but a fun and enjoyable adventure story.
Okay, that's the big stuff. Now for ways that I think it could have been improved: (1) As other reviewers have pointed out, Graham isn't blond. It was jarring the first time it was mentioned, but I was able to get over it, as I figured it was just an initial (if inaccurate) description. Then it came back again and again. (2) As I said in my review of The Floating Castle, I would love a bit more to connect these novels to the computer game series. A mention of an event or location or two would do so much--I just want him to pass by the woodcutter's house, pick a carrot from behind the castle, or see the silhouette of a beanstalk in the distance. (3) Valanice had a major role in the beginning. And then she went off on the quest. I was finally going to see her prove herself. Have her own moment in the spotlight. Develop the character beyond "woman who was rescued from a tower and then sat quietly by her husband for the rest of her days." But it turns out that she doesn't go on the quest. She accompanies Graham until he gets the instructions for the quest, then she returns home while he goes off on an adventure. Yes, it would have changed the story, but it was an exciting thought until that fell apart. (Oh no--am I about to start exploring the world of King's Quest fanfiction?)
Okay, that's the big stuff. Now for ways that I think it could have been improved: (1) As other reviewers have pointed out, Graham isn't blond. It was jarring the first time it was mentioned, but I was able to get over it, as I figured it was just an initial (if inaccurate) description. Then it came back again and again. (2) As I said in my review of The Floating Castle, I would love a bit more to connect these novels to the computer game series. A mention of an event or location or two would do so much--I just want him to pass by the woodcutter's house, pick a carrot from behind the castle, or see the silhouette of a beanstalk in the distance. (3) Valanice had a major role in the beginning. And then she went off on the quest. I was finally going to see her prove herself. Have her own moment in the spotlight. Develop the character beyond "woman who was rescued from a tower and then sat quietly by her husband for the rest of her days." But it turns out that she doesn't go on the quest. She accompanies Graham until he gets the instructions for the quest, then she returns home while he goes off on an adventure. Yes, it would have changed the story, but it was an exciting thought until that fell apart. (Oh no--am I about to start exploring the world of King's Quest fanfiction?)
May 17, 2022
Ehhhh, this was okay. I did remind me a lot of the games, but it was less fun reading about it.
March 26, 2025
Flows well, is good for what it is (a pg fantasy book). I got this at Antique books :) 🦎
July 4, 2013
This adventure focuses on King Graham during the time Alexander is missing and Rosella is seven. Graham must rescue the Fairy of Spring from the evil clutches of imps. Why did the imps kidnap her? Well, eventually you find out. It feels a bit different than a "King's Quest" adventure, this is more of a general fantasy narrative that lacked the spirit and humor of the games. Also the narrator insists for whatever reason, that Graham is blonde.
If you've only ever seen box covers, or the cover of this book, you'll wonder if the author(s) ever played, much less saw the games.
Its an alright story, but hardly a stellar example of what made the games so enjoyable. As a bonus it does flush out Valanice's character, but only a bit.
If you've only ever seen box covers, or the cover of this book, you'll wonder if the author(s) ever played, much less saw the games.
Its an alright story, but hardly a stellar example of what made the games so enjoyable. As a bonus it does flush out Valanice's character, but only a bit.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews