Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Not as enjoyable as I hoped

The Trouble with Peace (The Age of Madness Book 2) by Joe Abercrombie

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I bought my first book by Joe Abercrombie by mistake. I did not mean to click the ‘buy it now’ button, but I did, and I eventually read and thoroughly enjoyed The Blade Itself – Book one of the First Law Trilogy. I went on to devour the other two books of that trilogy, then consumed the whole Shattered Sea Trilogy in a month. I was excited to learn that Abercrombie was returning to the First Law world with another trilogy – The Age of Madness. The first book of […]

Say one thing for Joe Abercrombie, he knows grimdark

A Little Hatred (The Age of Madness #1) by Joe Abercrombie

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I am a HUGE fan of Joe Abercrombie’s First Law series which began with an original trilogy but has sprouted three additional stand alone novels and a collection of short stories. This is the first book in a new trilogy called the Age of Madness. It’s been a few years since Abercrombie visited the First Law series but that is because he spent several years writing all three books of this series at once. He wanted to be better with his continuity and ensure that […]

Half a War – only kept me half engaged

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In my review for Half the World, book two in the series, I said, “The two can’t stop worrying at each other and their eventual romance, with standard misunderstanding, is pretty predictable. Both characters have good arcs and come to happy endings, I just wasn’t as interested in their perspective of world events as I had Yarvi’s.  While I am interested in the events occurring around the Shattered Sea, and how Father Yarvi and Gettland will get through the eventual war that is coming, I hope that […]

‘Grimdark’ wears out its welcome for me

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So lately I really seem to be picking books with really unredeemable characters (see my reviews for the Tales of the Ketty Jay series), and I’m struggling a bit. I read this book in the gym–I’m a nerd and reading while cycling/on the elliptical is one of the only things that keeps me from getting bored at this point–and some points were really exciting, but most of the time I just felt kind of… meh about it. Mostly this is because I found I didn’t care […]

Half the World – not half as interesting as the 1st book in series

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I thoroughly enjoyed the first book in the Shattered Sea trilogy, Half a King and gave it a four star review.  In the comments, narfna said, “I LOVED this book. The sequels were a bit disappointing for me, though.”  Uh oh.  After taking a non-fiction break, I picked up Half the World with a tiny bit of doubt that I would enjoy it as much as the first.  While I can’t speak for book three yet, I did find Half the World a bit disappointing.  I give […]

Half a King – Abercrombie with half the gore

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Joe Abercrombie is the author of the First Law Trilogy.  A fairly brutal series that is more graphic than most standard fantasy, I recall wincing at times while reading the series.  While I thoroughly enjoyed the First Law books, I have never gotten around to the follow up books in the world setting.  In 2014 “Half a King” came out and was featured at my favorite bookstore as the speculative fiction pick of the month.  I seem to recall hearing that he had written this […]



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