The Wulfric the Wanderer Series

The Wulfric the Wanderer Series
A Sword & Sorcery Series written by Charles Moffat

Monday, December 12, 2016

Wrathgar is the real assassin in "The Assassin's Trail"

The Adventures of Wrathgar is a series of novels by Canadian fantasy author Charles Moffat featuring the titular character Wrathgar, a barbarian from the Snowfell Mountains who during the first book of the series (The Assassin's Trail) journeys south to find a murderer and bring back his head...

The murderer in question, Muddenklaw, joins the Assassin's Guild, and readers are misled with the idea that Muddenklaw is the assassin... But he isn't.

Wrathgar has been sent to kill Muddenklaw and bring back his head. He is effectively a bounty hunter, but he is also effectively the true assassin in the story. The author is just being sneaky with the title.

Genre or subgenre wise this book is "heroic fantasy", but also has a feeling of being Sword & Sorcery, a touch of grimdark, and also survival fiction (think of books like "Hatchet"). His writing style feels similar to Robert E. Howard, George R. R. Martin, David Eddings and a few others. Very literary, but not to the point of excessive details like GRRM sometimes does.

If you love books with archery in it this is also a book that is chock full of archery too. Definitely a lot of archery in this book. If you are a big fan of fantasy books with lots of archery (historically accurate archery) then this is a book for you.

UPDATE March 2021

Charles Moffat keeps adding more books to the series. See also:

The Blizzard's Daughter

The Coven's Wolves

The Demon's Sacrifice

The main character gets older during each book (obviously he won't be getting younger) but what is interesting is that the author is writing the books in alphabetical order. So will there be 26 books in the series, all the way from A to Z? Taking the character from a teenager to an old man???

If so this could end up being one of the biggest book series of all time.

Eg. Wheel of Time is 15 books long and 4.4 million words.

Moffat's first two books clock in at 50 to 60k (pulp fiction length novels), but books 3 and 4 are 120k and 110k. So if book 5 is 100+k and the trend continues after that we are looking at a series of 24 books with 100k or more per book, with the first two books of the series being pulp fiction length...

24 x 100k... + 50k + 60k... = 2,510,000+ words

Okay, so maybe not as long as Wheel of Time. But this assumes the author continues to write novels in the 110 to 120k range. What if they end up being in the 150 to 200k range? That changes the math dramatically. Or what if he goes full GRRM and starts writing books that are 300k or more???

Could you imagine a series of books that are all 300k and there are 26 books in the series??? 7.8 million words!!! Or more!!!

Seriously, maybe it is a good thing he is keeping the books smaller. More bite sized.

Robert Jordan died before he could complete the Wheel of Time series. That is how big it was. The publishers had to hire a ghostwriter to finish writing the series. And GRRM is still writing A Song of Ice and Fire (aka "Game of Thrones"). Who knows if or when he will ever finish it.

When you start reading a book series you kind of hope the author keeps it relatively short and actually lives to finish writing it. Moffat is in his early 40s and is currently publishing 1 or 2 novels per year, and has stated on social media that his goal is to release a new Wrathgar novel every 8 to 12 months.

At that rate he should be finished writing the series sometime in the 2030s, so he should still be in his 50s and alive.

All in all, "The Adventures of Wrathgar" promises to be a huge epic series worth reading. If you've already read all of the Game of Thrones and Wheel of Time books maybe this one is worth checking out.

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