'The Orc King' is a New York Times bestseller. Maybe because it has scenes where ogres battle elves and pegasi! Top that, Junot Diaz!

Dungeons and Dragons-themed fantasy tome 'The Orc King' is a New York Times bestseller, which means some people at some stores bought many copies. Why'd they do that? Maybe it's because orcs fall in love just like Patrick Moberg and the rest of us. In today's book club selection, orc king Drizzt Do'Urden's lady, the human fighter from the Icewind Dale Catti-Brie, reconciles with her once-paramour, the barbarian Wulfgar. Cue mood music!

'The Orc King,' a Dungeons and Dragons-themed tome, is currently on the Times bestseller list, which may or may not be meaningless. We're venturing into this enchanted realm to find out why.

Dungeons and Dragons-themed fantasy tome 'The Orc King' is slipping down the Times bestseller list. Why? We went and bought a copy to find out.

What's this? The New York Times bestseller list "is not a completely accurate barometer of what the reading public is buying," public editor Clark Hoyt informed us last week. This, even in spite of recent adjustments to the top-secret formula, devised in order to prevent publishers from "gaming the system" that determines the list's rankings: Appalling! Well, not really. As people who work in publishing like to tell their disappointed authors, the mysteriously-weighted list has always been essentially meaningless. Unless those authors have bestseller bonuses in their contracts, in which case: The list is extremely meaningful! And so while the list does not mean everything, it must mean something. For example, the #1 spot on this week's Hardcover Fiction list is occupied by a John Grisham book called "Playing For Pizza." What's that about?