grimdark

Joe Abercrombie, Red Country (2012)

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Author: Joe Abercrombie

Title: Red Country

Format: Hardcover

Pages: 451

Series: First Law World #6

Abercrombie’s Red Country is in many aspects a continuation of the First Law Trilogy, the review of which was incidentally one of our first Two-shots. After all, Logen Ninefingers, known in the North as Bloody-Nine, is one of the main protagonists of this bloody fantasy western. And if that comes as a spoiler… Well, it’s on the back of the freaking cover, so we don’t count it as a spoiler – though probably some of the book characters would disagree 😀

In many other aspects, however, it’s as standalone as Abercrombie’s novels go: it takes place in a fundamentally different part of the First Law world, on the very frontier of the Western continent, Far Country. This part of the world is no more peaceful than Angland or Styria: torn by gold fever, hostile encounters with elusive aboriginal people called Ghosts, and inhabited by the shattered dreams of people who ran away from their past, hoping for a new opening, Far Country only seems serene from far away. But its biggest selling point, especially for the Lamb, was the pronounced lack of Bayaz.

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R. Scott Bakker, The Thousandfold Thought (2006)

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Long time, no see – vacation time is not inductive to writing, but gives lots of opportunities to read, even in the middle of an Internet-less wilderness :). I usually leave the thickest books for my vacation time, as only then I might be sure of reading them in full, and in reasonable time. For the summertime I also leave those books which I wouldn’t have read any other time – vacation makes me more bullshit-tolerant 😉

And that’s why one of my summer readings this year was the final installment in Bakker’s acclaimed trilogy The Prince of Nothing. I know, I have said before I won’t be reading The Thousandfold Thought anytime soon, too irritated with previous installments to care; while The Darkness That Comes Before was still readable, The Warrior Prophet was just awful. But I like to finish things, and that gutted carcass left on my metaphorical porch, to use the imagery borrowed from Bakker, begged to be cleaned up and buried for good.

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Joe Abercrombie, The Heroes (2011)

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Piotrek: Two armies march to battle. Black Dow’s Northmen and three divisions of Lord Marshal Kroy’s Union soldiers. They meet and fight for three days, and 500 pages, upon a river, next to a small town of Osrung and a famous hill called The Heroes.

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For a teenage me that would be the good parts distilled. Like what the little boy wanted to hear from his grandpa instead of all the talking and kissing and other boring stuff.

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Oh no, no it isn’t. It’s a fighting book. But not about glorious adventures of dashing heroes. It’s about the blood and piss and human stupidity. With very little magic it’s basically a detailed depiction of a fictional battle between Vikings and an early Renaissance army getting medieval on each other.

Ola: Very much a fighting book; nothing less and nothing more. And it’s not even about a whole war, just about one, maybe not even the most important incident, of this war. It’s Abercrombie at his best, reveling in gore and misery, depicting the primitive, intimate and brutal human fighting in all its terrible glory.

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R. Scott Bakker, The Warrior Prophet (2005)

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The Warrior Prophet is the second installment in Bakker’s well-known trilogy Prince of Nothing. The first book, The Darkness That Comes Before, brought about an intriguing world, closely mirroring early medieval Europe, particularly the First Crusade, but also imbued with many-flavored, dangerous magic as well as with a secret knowledge of a past Apocalypse.

The first installment, despite its numerous flaws detailed in my earlier review, had been promising enough to lure me into reading the second book. The first book in any trilogy is an opening. A statement, a brag, an invitation. It shouts loudly and clearly the intentions and ambitions of an author, but it is also, maybe even mainly, a promise. A promise of what will come after – after the game is set, the figures introduced and prepared for action, and the beginnings of all the plot strands are woven. It’s also a promise of getting ever better. The second book should fulfill that promise, leaving the readers yearning for more, waiting for a satisfying, all-encompassing conclusion of part three (at least in case of trilogy). Does The Warrior Prophet deliver on that promise?

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R. Scott Bakker, The Darkness That Comes Before (2003)

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I’m back from vacation, at least for a few days ;). And thus I can give you the first review from my summer readings :).

The first installment in the famous grimdark sequence The Prince of Nothing, The Darkness That Comes Before, is as long and convoluted as its title. An almost 650 pages long, heavy piece of literary work (both literally and figuratively), Bakker’s debut had been a resounding one as well.

A time of Second Apocalypse is nigh… Sounds captivating, doesn’t it? It means that the First Apocalypse had already happened, that it wasn’t as all-encompassing as to kill everyone, and that survivors managed to carry the knowledge of that terrible event through the centuries to come. Unfortunately those in the know are few and far between, and do not enjoy any kind of esteem from their contemporaries. So it doesn’t come as a big surprise that they somehow failed to share their knowledge with others, and in the consequence, the majority of the humanity is heading blindly and meekly, like lambs, to their slaughter.

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Joe Abercrombie, The First Law Trilogy (2007–2009)

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Ola: It’s been a while since Abercrombie wrote his first grim dark trilogy – and yet it still reads like something new. Why? Abercrombie did something seemingly unusual: he took most of the major tropes of epic fantasy and put them on their heads. He infused his books with a such an overwhelming dose of cynicism, bleakness and grimness that was rarely seen before.

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