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igenlodeI went to a lot of trouble to get hold of this book, and was very lucky to get it: the copy I found on the branch library shelves was battered with a cracked spine, and had been marked by the librarian "Please withdraw on return" -- fortunately for me, it had presumably been hastily reshelved by an unpaid and untrained volunteer (almost all the librarians having now lost their jobs in order to save the Council money) who had failed to notice this instruction, and I was thus able to find out what happened in the final volume. And it's quite a lot. The death of the King and both his adult heirs, for a start, which throws the normal plotting on the ruling Council into paranoid overdrive, plus the trifling matter of a major invasion during all the in-fighting, while the enemies of the First of the Mages start to catch up with him, and neither they nor he turn out to care much about the collateral damage....
I do get the "grimdark" label now... and I'm afraid I don't like it. I should probably have taken more warning from my passing comment on Before They Are Hanged that I was knocking off a star because the author had repeatedly used a trope I didn't much enjoy; in this case, unfortunately, he pretty much bases the entire conclusion to the trilogy on it, and the results are not happy (a description that is all too apt in more ways than one).
And the other problem, to be frank, is that it isn't much of an actual ending -- I was left thinking "is that it"? If there had been another volume to follow I might have felt differently about the book, but as a finale it dribbles away in various different directions that are left open. There is the big battle, but then there is a lot of inconclusive aftermath.
What I liked about the first book was that it was making us feel sympathy for the characters who would normally be playing the role of villains. This book is basically taking away hope and showing us futility; there is no redemption, we are all just puppets, and good intentions come to nothing when both sides are using evil magic.
And the magic is a problem; what were originally intriguing hints never come to much more than hand waving ("I have united three schools of magic!" -- we didn't even know there were three to unite), and all the complex mythology around Juvens and the Maker that likewise gave an impression of great historical depth now gets reshuffled so often that I simply couldn't follow or remember who was supposed to have done what to whom -- and much worse, I no longer *cared*, which was a problem given that I suspect that this was intended to form a shocking revelation. (We never even learn what the Eaters do -- are they literally just cannibals? Surely not.)
The twist that did work for me was the role of Jezal, which neatly explains among other things why on earth he was picked for the expedition to find the Seed in the first place (all the others are required for specific roles). And I did immediately start wondering about Prince Raynault at that point...
Logen's ability to speak to 'the spirits' (also never explained), however, which we see him using in a routine way at the start of the first volume, doesn't seem to serve any purpose other than to provide an excuse for him to have been picked and gets pretty much forgotten about; when he suddenly does it again towards the end of this book I actually didn't realise what was happening because I had completely forgotten about it, and it hasn't been established as a normal part of his old life. Ferro likewise really doesn't do that much other than hold a stone and then decide to put it away again, which is possibly supposed to be a transformative character moment but didn't feel like it.
I suppose pairing off Glokta and Ardee makes some sense, given what we see of their uneasy alliance/intellectual banter in the course of this and the previous book, and the fact that she is someone who does remember him through the rose-tinted lenses of the past, but the image of a wife actively choosing to share a room with her husband's incontinence, however much she wants to be needed, is a hard one to swallow. And the fascinating, challenging woman of the first novel has largely descended into an erratic self pitying drunk.
Logen's 'arc' probably makes the most sense to me in terms of storytelling; it's not pretty, but it fits the narrative of epic tragedy and betrayal seen in old myths. It makes sense of all those constant references in Book 1 towards a past he is hoping to escape, and his apparently unfounded insecurities - and he never did want to be a king anyway. He was happier not even being the chief. (Although surely anyone who has lived and fought with him as long as Tul Duru or the Dogman would recognise the manifestations of the Bloody-Nine - especially as he has apparently been in the habit of 'letting his face hang on one side' as a recognisable signal of it to intimidate people - and know to get out of the way and not hold him responsible for anything that happens? Maybe not in the middle of battle, but when standing there staring at arm's length...)
Glokta does little save scrabble around for survival at his masters' bidding, and I found it harder to feel sympathy for him in this book. Also, are we supposed to remember who Salem Rews was? Because I don't.
Joe Abercrombie writes terrific fight and battle sequences, and he can create compelling characters. I'm not entirely convinced by his ability to construct an overarching plot beyond his set piece encounters, but it's the moral of futility that puts me off, I'm afraid. I really loved the world he evoked in the first book, and this one eventually tears it all into little shreds of destruction with the motto of 'might is right, and all that matters is power'.
I knocked a point off Book 2 for personal lack of enjoyment; I would rate this lower on grounds of overall achievement, minus another point for personal lack of enjoyment, which makes for yet another trilogy that failed to live up to its opening promise, alas. At this stage I really can't remember how long it has been since I read one that did.
I do get the "grimdark" label now... and I'm afraid I don't like it. I should probably have taken more warning from my passing comment on Before They Are Hanged that I was knocking off a star because the author had repeatedly used a trope I didn't much enjoy; in this case, unfortunately, he pretty much bases the entire conclusion to the trilogy on it, and the results are not happy (a description that is all too apt in more ways than one).
And the other problem, to be frank, is that it isn't much of an actual ending -- I was left thinking "is that it"? If there had been another volume to follow I might have felt differently about the book, but as a finale it dribbles away in various different directions that are left open. There is the big battle, but then there is a lot of inconclusive aftermath.
What I liked about the first book was that it was making us feel sympathy for the characters who would normally be playing the role of villains. This book is basically taking away hope and showing us futility; there is no redemption, we are all just puppets, and good intentions come to nothing when both sides are using evil magic.
And the magic is a problem; what were originally intriguing hints never come to much more than hand waving ("I have united three schools of magic!" -- we didn't even know there were three to unite), and all the complex mythology around Juvens and the Maker that likewise gave an impression of great historical depth now gets reshuffled so often that I simply couldn't follow or remember who was supposed to have done what to whom -- and much worse, I no longer *cared*, which was a problem given that I suspect that this was intended to form a shocking revelation. (We never even learn what the Eaters do -- are they literally just cannibals? Surely not.)
The twist that did work for me was the role of Jezal, which neatly explains among other things why on earth he was picked for the expedition to find the Seed in the first place (all the others are required for specific roles). And I did immediately start wondering about Prince Raynault at that point...
Logen's ability to speak to 'the spirits' (also never explained), however, which we see him using in a routine way at the start of the first volume, doesn't seem to serve any purpose other than to provide an excuse for him to have been picked and gets pretty much forgotten about; when he suddenly does it again towards the end of this book I actually didn't realise what was happening because I had completely forgotten about it, and it hasn't been established as a normal part of his old life. Ferro likewise really doesn't do that much other than hold a stone and then decide to put it away again, which is possibly supposed to be a transformative character moment but didn't feel like it.
I suppose pairing off Glokta and Ardee makes some sense, given what we see of their uneasy alliance/intellectual banter in the course of this and the previous book, and the fact that she is someone who does remember him through the rose-tinted lenses of the past, but the image of a wife actively choosing to share a room with her husband's incontinence, however much she wants to be needed, is a hard one to swallow. And the fascinating, challenging woman of the first novel has largely descended into an erratic self pitying drunk.
Logen's 'arc' probably makes the most sense to me in terms of storytelling; it's not pretty, but it fits the narrative of epic tragedy and betrayal seen in old myths. It makes sense of all those constant references in Book 1 towards a past he is hoping to escape, and his apparently unfounded insecurities - and he never did want to be a king anyway. He was happier not even being the chief. (Although surely anyone who has lived and fought with him as long as Tul Duru or the Dogman would recognise the manifestations of the Bloody-Nine - especially as he has apparently been in the habit of 'letting his face hang on one side' as a recognisable signal of it to intimidate people - and know to get out of the way and not hold him responsible for anything that happens? Maybe not in the middle of battle, but when standing there staring at arm's length...)
Glokta does little save scrabble around for survival at his masters' bidding, and I found it harder to feel sympathy for him in this book. Also, are we supposed to remember who Salem Rews was? Because I don't.
Joe Abercrombie writes terrific fight and battle sequences, and he can create compelling characters. I'm not entirely convinced by his ability to construct an overarching plot beyond his set piece encounters, but it's the moral of futility that puts me off, I'm afraid. I really loved the world he evoked in the first book, and this one eventually tears it all into little shreds of destruction with the motto of 'might is right, and all that matters is power'.
I knocked a point off Book 2 for personal lack of enjoyment; I would rate this lower on grounds of overall achievement, minus another point for personal lack of enjoyment, which makes for yet another trilogy that failed to live up to its opening promise, alas. At this stage I really can't remember how long it has been since I read one that did.
no subject
Date: 2023-10-01 09:58 am (UTC)I cut the later Earthsea books out of my world. I don't feel they work with the earlier ones and I don't really care for them.
Haven't tried Fionavar. Maybe someday.
I know you didn't enjoy the later Ancilliary books as much as I did. I think she was trying to write about the need for individual agency. Breq never forces anyone to do anything, nor even tries to lead to any extent. She will make people aware of their rights and options, but always lets them chose their own course of action.
Because AIs have no agency. They can be subject to over-ride codes at any time.
It's a theme that carries right across the books. Seivarden is so used to giving orders that it's very hard for her to step back and consider what others might actually want. She makes progress, but has a whole lifetime of habit to overcome -and that's never easy.
So, to me, ending the series with a claim that AIs have a legal right to independence is a completion that makes sense.