The King's Blood by Daniel Abraham

[Garlan the Gallant]

Well, the book is out now. I thought I would open a thread for it.

Quick question: is there to be no audiobook for this novel?

[DanielAbraham]

There will be at some point. They bought the rights. I don't know what the production schedule looks like though. I just hope they get Pete Bradbury again.

[Sci-2]

I'm pleased this book is out, but I am still reading the previous volume....as such, I'll just say that's a very sexy photo of you Daniel.

[Spring Bass]

The two-week delay* on the e-book edition is pretty lame. I'll have to stay out of spoiler discussions until then.

* Except that there's apparently no delay if you buy it off the Amazon UK page (I'm American). Question for any of my fellow Americans - have you ever bought e-books off of Amazon UK and gotten them even when the American e-book isn't out yet? This calls for a test.

[Hereward]

Just bought it. God, I've been looking forward to this.

[JGP]

Me too. But no eBook? What the shit.

---

Lane, I bought an eBook from Amazon UK, if I recall correctly, 3 or 4 months before it was released this side of the pond. Publishers' wised up though, cause I tried to do the same with Angelmaker.

Got cockblocked, buggered, and curb stomped. Amazon's mean business.

[aidan]

I *really* enjoyed it. I'll collect my thoughts and have some proper input after the weekend, but, in short, I felt that each of the character's and their respective plots matured in a satisfying way (Geder's continued transformation is fascinating), and the world feels more lived-in and natural than it did in The Dragon's Path.

[Ser Plissken]

I'm about a third of the way through, and really, really enjoying it.

There's so much to love in this series. The prose, the characters, the setting.

The scenes with Marcus and Yardem are just perfect. As entertaining a double act as Tyrion and Bronn.

Well done, Mr Abraham.

[aidan]

I'm about a third of the way through, and really, really enjoying it.

There's so much to love in this series. The prose, the characters, the setting.

The scenes with Marcus and Yardem are just perfect. As entertaining a double act as Tyrion and Bronn.

Well done, Mr Abraham.

Some of my favorite scenes from the book happen between them in the final half. Terrific stuff.

[Ser Plissken]

Finished it last night. As Aidan says, terrific stuff.

I spent the last part of the book

mourning Dawson, one of my favourite characters in the series. If only he'd just spoken to Geder, or gotten Jorey to do so on his behalf, then things might have turned out better for him. Though, thinking about it now, it probably wouldn't have made a blind bit of difference. Geder's far too intoxicated by his sudden rise to power to realise, or perhaps even care, that he's being manipulated. And he's also a bit of a psycopath.

And when Yardem threw Marcus in the metaphorical ditch and took control of the company... Noooooooooo! I'm sure the next time they meet, sparks will fly.

Looking forward to to the next book in this excellent series. Do we have any idea how long we have to wait for the The Spider's War?

[aidan]

Geder's far too intoxicated by his sudden rise to power to realise, or perhaps even care, that he's being manipulated. And he's also a bit of a psycopath.

It's funny that you call him 'intoxicated' by the power. I'd say he's terrified of it, more than anything, and acts out of fear, going to drastic measures because he's unsure of how to effectively and subtle wield the immense power give to him. He's such a conflicted and layered character, though.

And when Yardem threw Marcus in the metaphorical ditch and took control of the company... Noooooooooo! I'm sure the next time they meet, sparks will fly.

This 'twist' has me more curious and confounded than anything else that happened in the novel.

I wasn't expecting it to happen so soo, though it was basically inevitable. I'm really curious about Yardem's motivations.

[Ser Plissken]

Geder never questions Basrahip’s motives for helping him. When the old priest demands he build a temple to the Goddess in every conquered city, Geder’s like, yeah, whatever, dude ... what’s for dinner?

Of course, that’s likely down to the old listen-to-my-voice Jedi mind-trick, so in a sense he’s drunk on the blood of the Goddess.

Like you say, Geder’s a complex and layered character, very much a product of his environment. And there’s certainly some part of him that seems to be getting off on the fact that where once he was mocked, he is now feared.

This guy has got PotentialSuperVillain written all over him.

[aidan]

So, my review turned out to be 2,800 words, so I won't post it in its entirety here, but the full thing can be read on my blog.

The gist:

One of the aspects of Abraham’s work that I respect and enjoy the most is how he engages with the story with every word he writes. Where so many authors of Epic Fantasy pound out six- to nine hundred word novels, Abraham publishes novels that tell an equal amount of story, (if not more, when held up against some of Jordan’s later novels, for instance) in 140,000 words of pure storytelling and character building, instead of 140,000 words of storytelling and 100,000 words of worldbuilding/magic system self-indulgence. There’s absolutely a place for both types of Fantasy, and I enjoy both, but Abraham’s approach stirs my drink just a little better.

This time around, the world feels better lived in than it did in The Dragon’s Path. Though the history in the story stretches out far behind the story told in The Dagger and the Coin, it could sometimes feel like the reader wasn’t always being fed all the history and mechanics of Abraham’s world. The King’s Blood pulls back more of the curtain on some of these aspects, just a little, but it is also enough to convince the reader that the history is there, and essential to the overall storyarc of the series, but Abraham is using a deft, delicate touch as he peels back the layers, only as necessary.

It’s not that Abraham spends a lot of time worldbuilding, in fact, if anything, there’s less of it here than in the first novel, but he does so with better economy and more specific to the characters who provide access to the world for the reader. We see the world as Cithrin knows it, as Geder and Dawson know it, not as Daniel Abraham, the overarching omniscient being of all-knowledge, knows it. This hearkens back to my earlier thoughts that Abraham has a history to tell, a world to reveal, but he only does so in ways necessary for the reader to understand the story, and only in ways that the characters themselves naturally transfer the knowledge of the world to the reader. Abraham spent some time establishing the rules and the boundaries of his playground in The Dragon’s Path, this time around he spends all of his time playing in that established world.

[...]

Another major argument levelled at The Dragon’s Path was that there wasn’t enough definition between the different races. In my review of The Dragon’s Path I complained that “I often had trouble separating them in my head and could rarely remember their physical appearances.” And futher, I was concerned about this because “they’re all (with the exception, perhaps, of the Drowned) human in their emotions, attitudes and personalities.” I missed the contradiction of these two thoughts, and instead suggested that a glossary would help. One is included in The King’s Blood, but I didn’t reference it once during my reading. Something changed in my perception of Abraham’s world this time around, and I considered my first reaction to the different “races” of humanity in his novels. Like our own world, which is populated by billions of people, some of whom are tall, some short, some have dark skin, some have light, some an epithantic fold to their eye and black hair, others blue eyed with pin-straight hair the colour of hay. But they are all humans just the same, irregardless of race. I can hear a story about fellow humans, something funny or sad, something true or something fictional, and never once stop the person telling the story to stop and describe, at length and with specificity, what ethnicity these characters are, what colour their skin, or whether they had brown eyes or blue. In some cases, cultural tendencies might have an effect on the context of the story, but often not. Generally, none of it matters a lick to the story being told. So, what does it matter if a character in Abraham’s series has glowing eyes, porcelain skin, or walrus-like tusks growing from their mouth? As Abraham’s characters are wont to point out, the thirteen races of humanity all spawn from a single starting point and, despite their differences, and their own set of racial standards and prejudices, are all just humans. They are characters, and when I stopped trying to define them visually or pigeonhole them for being Timzinae, Firstblood or Kurtadam, I was able to fall further into the story.

[...]

The story itself is less concerned about convincing the reader of these characters and this world, and is instead more comfortable with itself and more direct in its telling. It’s amazing to watch all of Abraham’s plot strings, many first established in The Dragon’s Path, and characters come together in a satisfying, emotionally intense collision. There’s a particular instance, just near the end of the second act, that had me equally amused and astounded; I never would have expected it, and it’s such an innocent and believable scene between two of the point-of-view characters, but the seeds planted promise of so much chaos to come in the later novels, that I couldn’t help but feel somewhat impressed with Abraham. There is another scene, which I’ve been expecting for a while, that left me equally confounded and surprised. Abraham’s ability to take me away and pull the rug out from under my feet while playing with familiar concepts is a rare ability for writers. The King’s Blood can sometimes feel like a second book, with no real beginning or end, just a whole lot of middle, but the plot devices and motivations set in place for later novels promise of great things to come as the series concludes.

Central to everything is Geder Palliako, the conflicted “hero” of Vanai. Geder’s unlikely rise to fame, and his slight sociopathic tendencies were fascinating in The Dragon’s Path, but are taken to a whole other level after a major even that occurs in The King’s Blood. In watching a character like Joffrey Baratheon from George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, a young man with too much power, he becomes easy to hate. Joffrey is cruel and revels in his power for its own sake. Geder, on the other hand, commits acts that would make Joffrey seem friendly, but does so in a way that the reader doesn’t so much hate Geder, but feels sorry for him, with some slight humiliation and horror underneath that. In speaking with someone else about Geder, they mentioned that they feel he is intoxicated by his power and authority. And while it’s true that Geder holds a grudge and revels in getting back at those individuals who once humiliated him, he also considers himself a good, gentle man. He does not seem intoxicated by his power so much as he’s a man afraid of the authority and responsibility handed to him. This fear and lack of confidence causes Geder to look for an easy way out, allowing him to be easily manipulated from behind the scenes, justifying his cruel actions by hiding behind the advice of his shadowy advisor. It’s fascinating to watch Abraham establish the “Dark Lord” as a regular person and the bad mistakes and circumstances that lead to him becoming a tyrant.

[...]

The King’s Blood is the real deal, and cements Abraham’s new series as one of the best new Fantasy series in recent years. If you’re looking for something to read while you wait for the next George R.R. Martin book, Abraham’s The Dagger and the Coin is sure to satisfy. In many ways it’s a smaller series than A Song of Ice and Fire, from breadth of plot to number of characters to page count, but where it really counts, characters you can’t help but love (or hate), shrewd politics, and the mixing of magic into a setting the rings of real world history, The Dagger and the Coin is equal to Martin’s beast. And, hey, Abraham will likely be done the entire series before the next volume of A Song of Ice and Fire hits shelves.

tl;dr — I really, really liked it.

[Tears of Lys]

Must... not... read... thread! Arggghhhh!

I'll have to do a reread of The Dragon's Path to get ready. :rubs hands gleefully:

[Werthead]

Geder can be best summed up as:

Fantasy Londo Mollari. This especially struck me when you realise the source of his turn in fortune is an incredibly powerful, ancient force whose symbol is a spider (as opposed to Londo's source of power being the Shadows, who roll around in near-invulnerable spider-shaped warships).

Obviously Londo himself is a familiar trope (the man wanting to do good who ends up inadvertently bringing about armageddon), but the similarity really struck me. But Abraham does such a good job with it that I really don't mind it, and I suspect the story will go in a different direction later on.

[Blue Roses]

Just ordered this and very excited.

[End of Disc One]

As far as I know everyone who is saying great things about this book, also loved The Dragon's Path. I'd like to see an opinion from someone who wasn't a big fan of that book.

[End of Disc One]

If someone wasn't a big fan of tDP, why on earth would they read Book 2?

Because the end of TDP gave them hope for the future of the series? I haven't read TDP but I've seen a lot of comments that it was boring, but sets up for a good series.

[PaulineMRoss]

Just finished this last night. I liked it better than The Dragon's Path, things seem to be moving along nicely. A few whoa moments - Geder (of course), Yardem, Cithrin (what was she thinking! that's not going to end well). Still not quite as awesome as The Long Price (but then, what is?), but building up a head of steam for the future.

[jdiddyesquire]

Just finished this last night. I liked it better than The Dragon's Path, things seem to be moving along nicely. A few whoa moments - Geder (of course), Yardem, Cithrin (what was she thinking! that's not going to end well). Still not quite as awesome as The Long Price (but then, what is?), but building up a head of steam for the future.

I suspect it will pay off in a big way and finish stronger than LONG PRICE did. He just keeps layering on tension. It's going to burst in one of these books!