Heroes of Destiny

When destiny beckons, no one can ignore the call....

Heroes of Destiny is an epic fantasy trilogy in potentia by young Canadian author Kevin Wong. Thus far only its first installment is completed and available for purchase; it is entitled Heroes of Destiny, Episode I: Eternal Knights, and Wong self-published it in 2006 with the help of Friesens in Altona, Manitoba. The book can be bought directly from its author via his personal website. The second book of the trilogy is incomplete, but already has a title: it's Heroes of Destiny, Episode II: Sacrifice of the Gods, and I imagine that it will be published and distributed in the same way.

I first encountered Kevin Wong and his oeuvre with the unwitting help of the Dalhousie University Faculty of Computer Science, of which Wong is an alumnus. Upon the release of Heroes of Destiny, Episode I: Eternal Knights, he embarked upon a book tour around the city of Halifax and its environs; one of his first stops was the atrium of the Computer Science building, where he spent much of his undergraduate career. The book-signing lasted for the better part of a day, and it was a harrowing experience—midway through the day, Wong was attacked by a remote-controlled robot that seemed offended when he offered it a copy of the book—but he doesn't seem to regret it; under the watchful eyes of everyone working in the building that day, Wong was catapulted into fame and literary stardom. He sold many books, and many more during the remaining days of his book tour, and in so doing groomed a cult following for himself.

Halifax newspaper The Daily News profiled Wong and Heroes of Destiny, Episode I: Eternal Knights on July 13, 2006. In that article, the book—and the trilogy-to-be of which it is a part—is described as being "about a group of friends who go on a mission to redeem the world from demons hell-bent on destroying it". But to my mind, this description misses the point of the novel, and glossing it so superficially does Wong a grave disservice. Heroes of Destiny is certainly an adventure story; but it is also a love story, and an allegorical lesson about morality, and an unrestrained tour through the mind of one of this century's most original thinkers. Above all, it is deeply touching call for all humanity, beseeching them to keep their sense of hope and childlike innocence and purity.

The story is set on a world called Eternium, and its characters adventure through the continent Eterniad; the story begins in the small country of Eternia, at the centre of which is Eternia Town and its rulers' abode, Eternia Castle. It is a utopian place:

Eternia contains noble people, commands a grand army, sails a sturdy navy, possesses vast wealth, produces endless bounties, creates timeless histories, worships great Kings and Queens, and eliminates want and suffering. If ever a land existed that peace truly smiled down upon it every single day and every single night, the Kingdom of Eternia is that land. (From Heroes of Destiny, Episode I: Eternal Knights, Chapter 1: The Eternal Knight.)

Providing a complete listing of characters would be an unforgivable indiscretion, because many of the characters' names either allude to or overtly reference their roles in the story. But I'm not spoiling anything by telling you that the protagonist is named Kevin, and he lives at home with his mother in Eternia Town; and that Kevin's love interest is the most beautiful woman in the entire world, the Eternian Princess, Launa. There's an astonishing variety of supporting characters who meet up with Kevin along the way; but he and Launa are at the heart of the story for its duration.

Kevin is handsome and brave, and a capable fighter; as the story opens, he is training to be a Knight of Eternia, which is the highest military honour that Eternia bestows upon any citizen. Launa is a perfect match for him:

She was a vibrant, charming, and sweet young girl, who also carried within her countless abilities that were each limitless, and a love for helping others that was immeasurable. She was extremely gentle and loveable, yet she was also ardently fiery and passionate. Her eyebrows were thin, and her complexion was rosy and full of life. She had incredible, long, and silkily-flowing brunette hair, and absolutely gorgeous, deep, crystal-clear blue eyes. Her figure was like that of a Goddess, and her smile seemed to light-up everything and everyone around her..." (from Chapter 1: The Eternal Knight.)

Their love is a beautiful thing, innocent and pure, and they spend a significant portion of the novel gazing deeply and passionately into each other's eyes. It is also a moral love: Kevin and Launa are each saving their virtue for the other, and neither would dare so much as consider leaving the relationship for someone else. This is perhaps the greatest lesson that Heroes of Destiny, Episode I: Eternal Knights has to offer its readers: nothing bad can befall a love so sweet and virtuous.

But sweet virtue does not preclude pleasures of the flesh. Kevin and Launa's love is also passionate:

Pressed against Launa's pure, yet nubile, body, Kevin ran his hands down the small of Launa's back, and caressed her delicately soft, smooth skin—causing tiny goose bumps to surface atop Launa's back as his fingertips moved along it so seductively. While Kevin was becoming entranced with the feel of the satiny skin of Launa, Kevin was also growing spellbound with the smell of Launa's intoxicating perfume, and more importantly: her absolutely mesmerizing natural scent. Akin to Kevin's sensations, Launa could not help but become enraptured by Kevin as he held her so strongly, yet so softly, alongside his body, and she felt powerless to resist the innate scent of Kevin's sweat and pheromones: a matchless musk that suddenly caused unbridled temptations to flow throughout her entire body, which was now trembling and wholly unable to resist succumbing to every one of Kevin's whims—or every one of her own whims for that matter. While Kevin continued to hold Launa's honeyed and ambrosial body close to his, and while they both continued to breathe and feel each other into the very recesses of their beings and souls, Kevin gently kissed Launa's creamy, saccharine neck, and said to her, "I have to go now. I love you." (from Chapter 1: The Eternal Knight.)

The plot centres around a great and noble adventure/quest to save Eternia—and, indeed, Eterniad, and all of Eternium itself—from the evil marauding demons who are endeavouring to take over the planet and make it serve their own nefarious ends. As the story unfolds, it becomes clearer and clearer to Kevin and Launa that they are destined to save their world; and since it is their destiny, they are able to rise to it and act heroically.

This is the second-most important lesson from the story: that good can conquer evil, and will conquer evil, if only you believe in its power to do so. Of course, having a true love to rely upon in times of hardship helps, and so does having the backing of your entire continent's military power; but destiny and the power of good can prevail, even when operating at a disadvantage.

I was touched by the story that begins in Heroes of Destiny, Episode I: Eternal Knights, and I have sent copies of the book itself or instructions on how to get it to many people; but few have managed to read the entire thing cover to cover, which is a testament to the breathtaking depth and scope of Wong's vision. The first installment weighs in at a little over four hundred pages, but this is not a novel to be savoured lightly; it needs to be read with careful attention to the nuances of Wong's writing, and with an eye to the moral lessons it has to teach us about love and living lives that are virtuous. In my own reading of the novel, I augmented my perception by consuming a shot of alcohol at every instance where more than eight exclamation points appear sequentially; it both punctuated the most adventurous points of the story and broadened my awareness of Wong's overall aim, and I suggest that any other reader follow my example. The ending is so heartstoppingly tragic that, by the time you reach it, you'll need the emotional fortification.

Some information from Kevin Wong's website, http://www.kevinwong.ca, but most from having read and loved to pieces the novel. Its prologue and first chapter are available on Wong's website, and so is the Daily News profile.

I read my own book many, many times, and each time I read it I always learned new things, and each time I enjoyed it more and more.
-- Kevin Wong, on the first novel in his Heroes of Destiny trilogy¹

In 1999, Justin Kruger and David Dunning published a study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology that caused a jolt of recognition in almost everyone who read it. These two psychologists demonstrated that people who are terrible at something cannot recognize their own incompetence. The classic example is the guy with the lousy sense of humour who repeats the same pointless, unfunny jokes at parties over and over again, laughing loudly each time, blissfully unaware of how annoying he's being. It turns out that the part of the brain that is responsible for a good sense of humour is the same part of the brain that recognizes a good sense of humour. To quote Kruger and Dunning, "people who are unskilled in these domains suffer a dual burden: Not only do these people make erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it."²

There is something oddly compelling about a person who is mediocre at what he does and yet possessed of complete confidence in it. Kevin Wong's novel, Heroes of Destiny, is no different from the literally hundreds of works-in-progress that I've seen churn through the queue in online writing workshops, but Wong's certainty that it is the greatest novel ever written makes its (rather ordinary) flaws strange and fascinating.

Like many first-time writers, Wong has never learned the rule of "show, don't tell," meaning that every thought that flits through his characters' minds must be laboriously explained. Important concepts are signalled, not by powerful writing or clever images, but rather by exhausting strings of exclamation points. Random words are put into boldface or italics or uppercase, sometimes all three. Wong always has his bullhorn out, and he will use it to make the most banal observations.

As she had a tendency to do with her precious son, Kevin's mom became angry with Kevin, and he knew that she was about to start yelling at him. Although in her mind she probably thought that she was still just talking, Kevin heard his mother's words to him in a rather different tone as she said, or rather, yelled, to him, "Your father took the test too soon as well!!!!! I didn't agree with him about it then, and I'm CERTAINLY not agreeing with you about it now!!!!!"

Wong shamelessly and transparently inserts himself into his story: the main character in Heroes of Destiny is called Kevin, and his name is repeated in practically every sentence. Wong is of course not the first author to create a fictionalized version of himself; it's a popular technique in postmodern fiction, designed to create an ironic distance between the author and his representation. But Wong is utterly incapable of irony: "Kevin"-the-character serves as a sock puppet for Kevin-the-author. From "Kevin," we learn all of Kevin's opinions about politics, war, love, and parenthood. The novel is as didactic as a medieval morality play: its characters lecture us about the evils of sex before marriage, and then, in case we missed the point, we are subjected to exactly the same lecture on the author's web page.

And as the ultimate reference as to why I believe one should wait until marriage before giving away the priceless gift of one's virginity, I would hope that one would read my Heroes of Destiny books, because all of my feelings on the matter are spelled out in them in exacting detail and with heartrending emotion.

Wong's description of his book as a "reference" is telling. Despite all the castles and demons and princesses and stuff, it's really quite hard to think of this book as fiction; Wong simply cannot imagine a hero thinking any differently about anything than he himself does. (I was considering doing a Marxist analysis of Wong's narrow vision of utopia, along with a side-rant about the way every fantasy culture in the history of the genre has to have a monarchy and a gold standard. But perhaps this isn't the time or place.)

Anyway. I'm not saying anything that Wong doesn't admit himself. When a fan tells Kevin that she likes "Kevin," he gleefully informs her that it means she likes him. What he doesn't mention is that Kevin is a computer science major from Halifax, while "Kevin" is a demonslaying hero from the land of Eternia. All fiction probably contains an element of wish-fulfilment, but when it is this raw and naked, reading it is a little embarrassing, kind of like reading a high-schooler's love letters.

Like many first-time writers, Wong makes pretty much every single mistake in the Turkey City lexicon: countersinking, As-You-Know-Bobbing, pushbutton words, and so on.³ Of course, everybody has to start somewhere, and even the very best writers, even at the height of their careers, will occasionally slip up, boring their readers with an infodump or handwaving away a difficult plot point. I would never condemn a writer for stumbling in this way; my house is made of glass.

However, Wong firmly believes that anyone who criticizes his work simply does not see his brilliance. Worse, he seizes every possible opportunity to dig for compliments from his readers. "Compared to the first Harry Potter book, did you enjoy reading my book more?" he asks a correspondent. "Out of curiosity, do you have a favourite chapter from my book? If so, what chapter was your favourite? Also out of my own curiosity, do you like how I wrote my story with gender-neutral language, and how I made the many girls and women in my story equal to or even better than boys and men?" "What was your favourite line or quote from my book? (I have quite a few favourite sentences / lines / quotes myself!)"

The very existence of the Turkey City Lexicon demonstrates that Wong's mistakes as a storyteller are made over and over again by hundreds and hundreds of inexperienced writers. Publishers' slush piles are filled with manuscripts that resemble Heroes of Destiny in every way. What's interesting about Kevin Wong is not the mistakes, but the sheer extent of his inability to recognize them. Even the worst authors I encountered in workshops usually recognized that there was something better to which they could aspire. Usually they had read books that they felt were superior than their own, even if they couldn't articulate exactly how.

Wong's web page, by contrast, is littered with assurances of his greatness. The only reason why an editor might want to change something he's written is to "compromise" it. Wong will not go to a publishing house because he needs to maintain "creative control."

And when it comes to my second and third Heroes of Destiny books, I need to have creative control even more so, because in these books - particularly the second book: Sacrifice of the Gods - I will be speaking of topics that are very dark and upsetting, and I know that no regular publisher would ever let me write what it is I am going to write - in the manner that I am going to write it.

I am not sure what "topic" Wong is referring to here, since the second and third volumes of his trilogy aren't written yet and I haven't seen them. But when I think about the trends in bestseller lists in the U.S. over the past few years, it's hard for me to come up with a topic that hasn't been addressed frankly: rape, drug addiction, poverty, incest, genocide. Not only are these books finding publishers, they're becoming blockbusters. This means that Wong is either unaware of the existence of the bulk of contemporary literature (which is possible, since a lot of amateur fantasy writers read nothing but fantasy), or he is so sure that his book is categorically different from every other book ever written that he can't see any reason for rejecting it other than its "dark" themes.

Though Wong frequently describes himself as humble, and though he seems genuinely grateful to the people who buy his book, and though he has a laudable desire to make the world a better place, there is a hint of bullying beneath all the aw-shucks. Nowhere on this web site did I find any trace of receptivity to new ideas: sex before marriage is bad, and Heroes of Destiny is good, and there is no room set aside for discussion of the matter.

What's interesting is that the best writers in the history of literature are all uncompromising in this way. Truly brilliant writers fight with editors and publishers -- and sometimes they even fight with their readers. They buck trends and break taboos. They write things that are unusual about topics that are uncomfortable. They wrestle with their demons, whose blood spills out onto the paper. They keep writing, even if it makes them unemployed and unloved. They are difficult people, and it's often their genius that makes them difficult.

What, then, do we do with an amateurish writer who adopts the stance of the genius? I don't know the answer to that. But I do find myself returning over and over again to Kevin Wong's web site, transfixed by his bad prose and his self-absorption.