Best Served Cold

Best Served Cold by Joe Abercrombie is a stand-alone novel set in the same world as Abercrombie's The First Law trilogy (a future re-read and review), and includes characters that debuted in the trilogy as well.

On the continent of Styria, a war is raging between city-states. Duke Orso of Talins is attempting to conquer Styria and proclaim himself king. His weapon is Monza Murcatto, who leads the Thousand Swords mercenary company with her brother, Benna. Monza, with a reputation for ruthless efficacy, has claimed many victories for Orso, and has destroyed a majority of his enemies. But the people of Talins love Monza, to the extent that Orso believes she and her brother intend to usurp him and take the crown for themselves. So Orso, with the help of a handful of others, betrays Monza and Benna. But while Benna is slain, Monza miraculously survives. And now, she wants revenge, and woe to all who stand in her way.

Best Served Cold is gruesome, violent, bloody, and a multitude of other descriptors. And every single one of them bad in a good way. Abercrombie's style of writing is obvious after reading The First Law, in the way he manages to capture in his prose the voice of the current point-of-view character. Every voice is unique, and identifiable, to the point where even were the characters not mentioned in the text, a reader would likely be able to pinpoint the speaker's identity. His characters are full of life, and even when unlikable they are likable (in the sense that you can see where they are coming from).

Abercrombie also writes action extremely well. Not overly descriptive, but never missing a beat, the action flows smoothly, and enables mental visualization so vivid that the scene could just as well be shown on the big screen. I'll include sex with the action, since that is pretty graphic (but again, not overly-so). The book isn't swarming with dicks and tits and sex-juices though (in fact, it only happens on a few occassions), so it shouldn't be enough to repel any but the most prudish of prudes.

If you've read The First Law, make sure you get his book. If you haven't read The First Law, you probably should, and then get this book.

Rating: Awesome

The Drawing of the Three and The Wise Man's Fear

I've been lazy about getting around to writing these, but since my last post, I've read three books. I'll write a full-length review for the one I read most recently, since it is fresh in my mind. Here are my short-length impressions of the other two:

The Drawing of the Three by Stephen King continues where The Gunslinger left off, and this time we follow Roland Deschain as he takes three portals to different times in our Earth, in order to learn about the three cards mentioned in prophecy: The Prisoner, The Lady of Shadows, and Death. New characters are introduced, including Eddie Dean, a man involved in the smuggling and use of drugs, and Odetta Holmes, a kind young woman relegated to a wheelchair by an accident in her past, who is not exactly as she initially seems.

This book is an improvement over The Gunslinger, in pace and characterization, and I managed to tear through most of this book at breakneck speed. However, in my opinion, the most exciting part of the book came in the first half, and slowed down after that point, not picking up very much even towards the climax. So while greatly improved over The Gunslinger, I can't give this book an "Awesome" rating, and must relegate it to a tier below.

Rating: Good

Next we have The Wise Man's Fear, by Patrick Rothfuss. I absolutely loved the first in his trilogy, The Name of the Wind (which has not been reviewed by me as of this post), and was hoping for a similar impact from this second installment. That didn't exactly happen, alas.

The Wise Man's Fear continues Kvothe's story at the University, but circumstances some ways through the book force Kvothe to take a break from his education there, and he goes on a side adventure, first to Vintas, a land with ancient noble lines, then to the Fae, led there by the legendary Felurian, then to Ademre, where the greatest mercenaries come from.

I liked this book. But didn't love. I came to dislike a few of the characters that I didn't originally, namely Denna, the subject of Kvothe's endless infatuation, and Kvothe himself (I hated Bast from the start). Their decisions, their feelings, it all seemed forced somehow—put into the book just to drive things out of whack, instead of being the result of a natural progression. Romance doesn't seem to be Mr. Rothfuss' strong suit. On the positive side, Kvothe's time in Ademre was extremely fun to read. On the neutral (unside?), Kvothe gets a lot of (completely unromantic) sweet ass (positive if you like that kind of thing, negative if you don't).

Here's to hoping Mr. Rothfuss can end his trilogy with a bang, instead of a fizzle.

Rating: Good

The Gunslinger

So, a friend of mine offered to let me borrow this book. Being the book-addict that I am, I couldn't refuse. He told me the writing was very unlike Stephen King, so it might not be what I expected. Having never read a Stephen King novel before (honest!), I wasn't really expecting anything in particular anyway. I just hoped it would be a good read.

And yeah, it was.

Roland Deschain is the last Gunslinger of the world, and he is following the track of the Man in Black. In the beginning, this is all you really know. The rest of the book reveals more about the history between them through a series of well-done flashbacks (as they are all-too-often poorly written) at intervals during his quest. These flashbacks unravel the mystery of Roland's character, providing some clarity to his motives, and helping one understand what made him the person he is in the present. The man can be cold, can be caring, and be yet cold again a moment later. He's a warrior, through and through, and views the world through a lens of cruel necessity.

Stephen King paints a picture of a bleak world, which is said to have "moved on". Here and there are remnants of ages long past, remnants of the modern world. Roland travels through badlands and desert, and the only civilization he comes across are lonely ramshackle dwellings and a rundown wild-west style town. Most people are poor, most animals are mutated, good food is scarce. Or at least, this is what it is like in the part of the world we first start traveling alongside Roland. Not all is as it first seems.

The book is cool. The book is weird. The book can be creepy.

The book is also very short, for a fantasy novel. 231 pages in total, in the revised and expanded version (which is the version any prospective reader should get). And this shortness makes the one problem I have with this book all the more irritating: the pacing is slow. It simply does not have enough going on during those 231 pages to turn it into a real page-turner. And that is a shame.

However, it's still worth reading. What Stephen King does with The Gunslinger is give us a glimpse into the scope of his imagination. And from what I have been told, the books that follow only get better. And if that's true, there is absolutely no reason to skip this one.

Rating: Good

Ender's Game

Brilliant. Brilliant brilliant brilliant brilliant brilliant brilliant. I could simply end the review there, and that would be a completely accurate assessment of this novel. But that's not how I work.

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card, winner of the Nebula and Hugo Awards in 1985 and 1986 respectively, is a science fiction novel telling the story of Andrew "Ender" Wiggin, a child genius who was born for one purpose: war. A population limit is in effect that bans families from having any more than two children, but Ender is a third, an exception to the rule. The military takes exceptional children to participate in Battle School, to train future commanders to fight against the alien Buggers; Ender's older siblings were both exceptional, but had their flaws: Peter was too violent, and Valentine was too timid. The military asked Ender's parents to have a third child, to be the middle-ground between Peter and Valentine. And, after monitoring Ender's growth for awhile, they decide he is that middle-ground they need him to be, and a man named Colonel Graff comes to ask him to leave his family and join the Battle School. Caring deeply for Valentine, but being bullied by Peter and shunned by other children his age for being a third, Colonel Graff manages to convince him. He takes a shuttle to the Battle School, and his real troubles start.

Ender is an amazing protagonist—he is at times extremely sympathetic, a young boy thrust into a situation no child should be subject to, with all the emotional trauma involved; and yet at other times he can be shockingly brutal, retaliating against his enemies in ways that no normal child would. And he is always genius, and expert at strategy and improvisation, surpassing all the other students at the battle school, earning both ire and respect. He makes friends, he makes enemies, he divides and he unites. And the Colonel Graff, the administrator of the Battle School does all he can to keep Ender isolated, to turn him into a somebody who can order soldiers to their death in order to accomplish any mission.

He goes through hell, and his reward for it will shock the hell out of you. My jaw was open for a good five minutes when the climax resolved. The big reveal, done perfectly.

But enough about Ender. My favorite character is actually Colonel Graff, despite his time on stage being relatively limited. He is resolved to make Ender the best commander he can, but is tortured by it at the same time. He does cruel things, for the sake of humanity, and his personal battles are portrayed very well.

The prose is nothing special, but not flawed in any way. The dialogue is fantastic, especially when the children use their own slang amongst each other.

Some people might be put off by the graphic level of violence portrayed, especially because it is a novel marketed towards teens, and is between children; really though, its no worse than a lot of the stuff on television nowadays.

Overall, excellent book. Despite being published in the mid-eighties, none of the science seems particulately outdated (apart from the "nets"), and there are no over-the-top space-opera-esque scenarios that would make an over-analytical cosmologist or physicist shake their heads in disbelief.

Those awards are well deserved.

Rating: Awesome

The Lord of the Rings

This will not be a typical review; most people should be familiar with the basic premise of the story by now, due to, if not the book, someone talking/arguing about the book, or the films, or someone talking/arguing about the films.

I have read The Lord of the Rings several times over the years, my first time being when I was twelve—about a year before the first of the film trilogy came out in theater. I know it is a cliché by now, but this is the book that beat, bound, and dragged me into the fantasy fandom. I fell in love with the world, Sam, the language, Sam, the larger-than-life characters, and Sam. I tore through the entire thousand-page epic in three days, staying up reading long past midnight, finishing each volume with only enough time to get one or two hours of sleep before catching the bus to school. I'd suffer through the hours heavy-lidded and half-dead, but be perfectly lucid by the time I got home, fueled by eager anticipation of the next chapter.

I read it again after watching the first of Peter Jackson's films. And then again after the second film. And yet again after the third film.

But it's been awhile since then.

I've been noticing recently a lot of negative comments about the novel; about how it is boring, or about how Tolkien's prose sucks, or about some recent authors are better than he. And I thought, “Well now, that can't be right. Are they really reading the same book that I did?”

And so I set about to reading it again.

And unlike the first, second, or third times, this read took me quite a long while. Nearly a month, in fact. At first, that might not sound very promising; that maybe I realized how boring his prose is, or couldn't understand the characters, or some other negative thing. But the truth isn't anything like that. The real reason it took me so long to read it is this: I am older.

An older person (or rather, a wiser person) will read it the way it was meant to be read; and it was meant to be read aloud. This is a story that needs to be told. The way in which it is written is akin to an ancient myth, the kind of story passed down orally from person to person. Grandiosity, events and people larger-than-life—these are things conducive to story-telling.

The downside to this is reading aloud takes longer than silently, and the voice tires. And so I had to take long breaks often. But it was entirely worth it.

When you read the languages of the Elves, Dwarves, Rohirrim, and Men of Gondor, and sing the songs as well, it breathes more life to the world. When you speak the way the characters speak, you (or at least I) subconsciously give each of them their own unique voice. When you describe unmuted the landscapes, and the cities, and the structures, the fact that this is a world of great wonder, masterfully crafted in one man's mind, becomes all the more apparent, and the mental images become all the more vivid. There is magic here, and glory, and power, and beauty, and love, all in the words. The words become music, and music is meant to be heard.

At least, this is what I experienced.

It is not boring. It is not badly written. The characters are not flat. If this is what you take from The Lord of the Rings, a particular internet meme is suitable to quote here: “You're doing it wrong.”

This story is a tribute to the old ways. A world that once was, now lost: a theme that is carried throughout the entire novel.

If you are a naysayer, I urge you to give it one more shot. Don't treat it like your average page-turner. Read it aloud, slowly, passionately, chapter by chapter. Make love to it (metaphorically of course; I don't condone sex with inanimate objects), and it will make love to you (also metaphorically).

Rating: Awesome

Chronicles of the Black Company

Chronicles of the Black Company is the first omnibus collection in the Black Company Series by Glen Cook, comprising the books The Black Company, Shadows Linger, and The White Rose.

The cover art is by Raymond Swanland, who is perhaps my favorite fantasy-themed artist working these days. It's kinda hard for me to attach an adjective for his work... except for ferocious. He does all of the cover art for these Black Company omnibus collections, and all of them make you feel like there is going to be some badass things going on in the book. And there are.

The Black Company is the first book in the series, and in this collection, and makes a pretty good impression for the series as a whole. The story follows the first-person point-of-view of one Croaker, the annalist of the eponymous Black Company, as they are working in a coastal city called Beryl, and are then hired into service to an empire across the sea to the north, ruled by the dreaded "Lady". The empire has been fighting rebel forces (creatively named "The Rebel"), and it becomes the Black Company's job to assist in defeating these forces. 

This first installment is definitely my favorite in the omnibus. The characters are interesting, the dialogue is snappy, realistic, and often funny, and the prose is not burdened with overlong, flowery descriptions. The tale is written like a journal of a man in the military, and is thus very straightforward. Fighting and battles are not drawn-out, instead being realistically portrayed as short engagements spread out over time with periods of lull in between. Despite the long chapter lengths, the book is fast-paced, and there are plenty of breaks that allow you to take a break from reading for the moment without being caught in the middle of a scene.

Second is Shadows Linger, which is just as good as the first installment. It takes place a few years after the events in The Black Company, the events mostly taking place in the city of Juniper, based around the mysterious growth of an ominous black castle located there.

All of the details behind the writing as were in The Black Company are true here as well, except for a couple of differences. Firstly, the chapters are much shorter, and secondly, while most is still told in Croaker's first-person point-of-view, a good deal of it is in third-person as well. It might seem strange at first, but it will make a lot of sense once you get to a certain point in the book.

Last in the omnibus is The White Rose, which takes place almost a decade after Shadows Linger, and whose story I can reveal nothing of due to extremely spoileriffic reasons. I will tell you that The White Rose falls a little flat compared to the first two books, not really coming into its own as a page turner until the last 120 pages or so. It continues the shorter-chapter pattern of the second book as well as the alternating first- and third-person points-of-view, and just like Shadows Linger makes sense even if even stranger than it was before.

Chronicles of the Black Company is a great buy, even if The White Rose doesn't live up to the first two books. It's hard to beat three books for fifteen dollars or less, in a trade paperback format, so that for me ends up pushing this up into "Books That Are Awesome" territory. I highly recommend this gritty, dark, humorous series with its realistic portrayal of military lifestyle. In the end, you will not be disappointed.

Rating: Awesome

Top Five Fantasy Novels

Can't go more than three days without a blog update. It makes me feel terrible inside. Unfortunately, my reading has slowed down somewhat because my writing output has increased, and I've been doing some other important things besides, so I won't be able to do rapid-fire reviews like I did for my first three.

So, content. My current favorite five fantasy novels, limited to one novel per series. I'm not going to go into why these are my favorites; that's what reviews are for. And trust me, I will get around to reviewing all of these.

List is likely to change as I read more. Let's begin!

1) Memories of Ice, by Steven Erikson

2) The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien (My review for this can be found here.)

3) A Storm of Swords, by George R. R. Martin

4) American Gods, by Neil Gaiman (My review for this can be found here.)

5) The Black Company, by Glen Cook (My review for this can be found here.)