Preview: ‘Feral & Foe’ Book 1 – A Little Comedy, A Little Fantasy, A Load Of Fun

by Richard Bruton

What happened to the Orcs after The Lord of the Rings was how Dan Abnett and Richard Elson pitched Feral & Foe – ending up with a great comedy fantasy tale.

It’s sword and sorcery done with tongue firmly in cheek, following the misadventures of the Necromancer Bode and the Warrior Wrath and takes place a long five years since the ‘Last-of-All-War’, where the good guys (the Monarchy) beat the forces of evil (The Malign Lord) and all those evil minions have had to figure out just what the hell they’re doing with themselves.

Well, Bode and Wrath are two of those evil minions and are having a hell of a bad time of things when the story opens, as the Wretchfinders are on their case, seeking retribution from all who served on the losing side. Their choice is simple… hunt and kill their own kind or be declared feral and foe.

The tone is set from the off, with the pair bickering and wisecracking even as they’re strung up by the Wretchfinders, and that tone builds and gets better all the way through, as the pair head off to hunt down their former comrades… starting small and then building up to Haggart Morn, the Butcher of Kurnow, a dangerous war-chief and a near-suicidal mission for our pair.

Anyway, time to get themselves some help, in the shape of heavy support from a Tank, just one of many recurring gags you’ll enjoy throughout Feral & Foe.

It’s Abnett and Elson’s third series together now, after Atavar and Kingdom, and they’ve obviously got good at this collaborating thing by now. Here, the ideas for Feral & Foe came from a desire from Elson to do something out-and-out fantasy, with Abnett developing the story once he’d seen a few of Elson’s sketches and ideas.

But of course, what makes it different from your all-out Heroic Fantasy (the sort where you need the capitals and it’s all full of those classic fantasy tropes and conventions) is that it’s set after most fantasy has usually packed up its long sword and magic wand into a burlap sack and buggered off home. So instead of seeing the gigantic epic playing out between good and evil, Feral & Foe is deliberately set after the big bad has been sent packing, the inter-epic moments if you will.

Essentially, it’s a couple of creators finding a great formula, mixing the comedy and the fantasy in way that makes both work, essentially developing a smooth double act that plays out in the chat and the bickering whilst also keeping the fantasy elements high in the mix.