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
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
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
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 […]
Tidbits from the world of the First Law.
This is a solid 3.5 star anthology collection. Most of the stories were good, not great, and a few were wonderful. I’m thinking particularly of “The Beautiful Bastard,” which shows us a pre-Gurkish torture ruination Glokta, and the very entertaining “Two’s Company,” which takes two characters that form the backbone of this collection, and pairs them with my personal favorite Abercrombie character, Whirrun of Bligh, aka Cracknut (’cause his nut is cracked). Even though all of these stories could be read on their own, Abercrombie […]
I’m so disappointed that I’m disappointed by this book.
This review has given me real trouble. I LOVED the first book, liked the second quite a bit, and trusted that Abercrombie would give me whatever I needed to love this one, too. In a weird way that I still don’t understand, this third book in his Shattered Sea trilogy has not managed to meet my expectations, even though I’m not sure I had expectations to meet, beyond that I wanted to love it. I’m sort of devastated that it didn’t work for me. While reading, […]