K.J. Parker (a.k.a.Tom Holt) - Part II

[Gigei]

Hey, so I've only read The Folding Knife which was brilliant but the ending...

Which book should I read next? Hopefully, one that isn't super depressing. Sad/tragic is fine but not super depression. I mean, I might not be able to handle that.

[Darth Richard II]

Jeez, that's uh, they're all kind of super depressing.

Actually, Sharps, if I remember right, is fairly upbeat for Parker. Read that.

This reminds me, I'm super behind on my KJ Parker.

[Gigei]

Okay, I'm just sayin' I survived The Folding Knife so I could probably handle something that level. Any more than that though...

Thanks.

[Darth Richard II]

I'd say that's probably his second most darkest/depressing/holy shit wtf. I still  have some to read still, though I doubt anythign will top The Hammer. That one is just like....yikes.

[Gigei]

4 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

I'd say that's probably his second most darkest/depressing/holy shit wtf. I still  have some to read still, though I doubt anythign will top The Hammer. That one is just like....yikes.

So I should be fine except for The Hammer? Heh, I'll do it! I just need to find a good time when I actually want a tragic story. Thanks!

[Bastard of Godsgrace]

9 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

I'd say that's probably his second most darkest/depressing/holy shit wtf. I still  have some to read still, though I doubt anythign will top The Hammer. That one is just like....yikes.

I think The Company is the most downbeat, with The Hammer probably the second. The three first trilogies also are big downers (Two of Swords not so much). I would also remommend Sharps as a reasonably cheerful novel (for Parker, at least).

 

[kiyoaki]

I think the historical novels (not the fantasy novels) he wrote as Tom Holt are also fairly good if you are looking for something similar in style to but not quite as bleak as his K.J. Parker stuff. I liked Meadowland.

[Darth Richard II]

I dunno, I feel like The Company starts kind of cynical and downbeat and while The Hammer is similar...that ending. 0.o

It’s all good though. 

[SeanF]

On 12/15/2018 at 2:22 AM, Darth Richard II said:

I'd say that's probably his second most darkest/depressing/holy shit wtf. I still  have some to read still, though I doubt anythign will top The Hammer. That one is just like....yikes.

"And then the bad thing happened."  When I found out what the bad thing was, it was like a punch in the solar plexus.

I'm reading his latest, Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City, which is pretty light-hearted by his standards.

[AncalagonTheBlack]

2 hours ago, SeanF said:

I'm reading his latest, Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City, which is pretty light-hearted by his standards.

I have this on my TBR pile, so, good to know.Though i do wonder, what 'light-hearted' means in Parkerland!

[SeanF]

1 minute ago, AncalagonTheBlack said:

I have this on my TBR pile, so, good to know.Though i do wonder, what 'light-hearted' means in Parkerland!

Quite blackly funny, without leaving you wanting to slash your wrists at the end of it.

[Kyll.Ing.]

Bumping this, because I just read Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City and found no newer relevant thread to discuss it in. Also, because a follow-up is apparently on the way and it hasn't been mentioned in this thread yet (for obvious reasons related to the thread's recent activity).

Anyway, onto the book. I really liked it. Seeing an ancient world from an engineer's perspective was really cool (I'm a civil engineer myself), and I always appreciate books that go into the nitty-gritty of logistics. I haven't read anything from this author before, but this book was well-written enough that I might check out more of his work.

The ending was sort-of... odd, though. I'll put it in spoiler tags because, well, it's an ending spoiler.

Spoiler

So out of nowhere, more or less, our hero takes an arrow to the belly and spends a few days on his death bed narrating the events of the previous few weeks to a scribe before presumably passing away, right after something has happened that dramatically turns the tide of the siege. And then there's a "translator's note" describing how the tale was found a thousand or so years later and noting that the text must have been embellished a few times as it contains some obvious continuity errors.

On one hand, I can appreciate the realism in this twist. Important people rise and fall as time passes, and sometimes both the rise and fall seem to happen out of nowhere. It is realistic for the colonel to fall victim to a freak accident and not be around to see the end of the war. Sometimes, people die suddenly, and in their own lives a person is always the narrator and POV character.

I can also see the reason for the "suddenly a thousand years later" twist. In the grand scheme of history, the siege mattered little. We don't get to see how it panned out, what the consequences were, what happened to the people, or who survived - none of them did, in the end. In the long term, it was just another event for the history books. The battle of Agincourt was recent by comparison. It might have changed the course of history some way or another, but in the end, it has no direct relevance to the situation a millennium later.

But on the other hand, there's the story being told in the book, and it was cut short. We didn't see whether the efforts of Orhan and the citizens paid off, if the city was saved, or the Empire, or how the arcs of the side characters ended. Everything just stopped.  It was like the 1978 Lord of the Rings animated movie, which cut off after the battle of Helm's Deep. There really was more story to be told here, and it feels a little un-fulfilling to go for the realistic ending. That might have been on purpose, though.

Anyway, I learned about the follow-up just now, and it might clear up some of the unanswered questions. 

 

[unJon]

51 minutes ago, Kyll.Ing. said:

Bumping this, because I just read Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City and found no newer relevant thread to discuss it in. Also, because a follow-up is apparently on the way and it hasn't been mentioned in this thread yet (for obvious reasons related to the thread's recent activity).

Anyway, onto the book. I really liked it. Seeing an ancient world from an engineer's perspective was really cool (I'm a civil engineer myself), and I always appreciate books that go into the nitty-gritty of logistics. I haven't read anything from this author before, but this book was well-written enough that I might check out more of his work.

The ending was sort-of... odd, though. I'll put it in spoiler tags because, well, it's an ending spoiler.

  Reveal hidden contents

So out of nowhere, more or less, our hero takes an arrow to the belly and spends a few days on his death bed narrating the events of the previous few weeks to a scribe before presumably passing away, right after something has happened that dramatically turns the tide of the siege. And then there's a "translator's note" describing how the tale was found a thousand or so years later and noting that the text must have been embellished a few times as it contains some obvious continuity errors.

On one hand, I can appreciate the realism in this twist. Important people rise and fall as time passes, and sometimes both the rise and fall seem to happen out of nowhere. It is realistic for the colonel to fall victim to a freak accident and not be around to see the end of the war. Sometimes, people die suddenly, and in their own lives a person is always the narrator and POV character.

I can also see the reason for the "suddenly a thousand years later" twist. In the grand scheme of history, the siege mattered little. We don't get to see how it panned out, what the consequences were, what happened to the people, or who survived - none of them did, in the end. In the long term, it was just another event for the history books. The battle of Agincourt was recent by comparison. It might have changed the course of history some way or another, but in the end, it has no direct relevance to the situation a millennium later.

But on the other hand, there's the story being told in the book, and it was cut short. We didn't see whether the efforts of Orhan and the citizens paid off, if the city was saved, or the Empire, or how the arcs of the side characters ended. Everything just stopped.  It was like the 1978 Lord of the Rings animated movie, which cut off after the battle of Helm's Deep. There really was more story to be told here, and it feels a little un-fulfilling to go for the realistic ending. That might have been on purpose, though.

Anyway, I learned about the follow-up just now, and it might clear up some of the unanswered questions. 

 

Odd endings is a recurring theme in KJ Parker books. Most are otherwise great. You should check out The Folding Knife next, or maybe The Hammer. 

[Kyll.Ing.]

58 minutes ago, unJon said:

Odd endings is a recurring theme in KJ Parker books. Most are otherwise great. You should check out The Folding Knife next, or maybe The Hammer. 

Reading the blurb for the next book on Amazon, I think I can see how it might unravel that ending, actually. This is how I think it tacks onto the first one and will probably continue the story. Spoilers because spoilers.

Spoiler

Notker, the hero of the next book, is revealed to be an actor in the blurb. Near the end of Sixteen Ways, Orhan muses on how some actors in town are better at impersonating him than he is himself. I originally thought that line was just a set-up to explain how Orhan couldn't sneak out of town by ordering a gate to open (the guards at the gate are specifically told not to trust Orhan's commands unless he's accompanied by someone they recognize, plus a signed and stamped order, in case of impersonation), but I think it sets up the next book.

So, Orhan dies or is otherwise incapacitated for a long time. Presumably both, the latter before the former. His person was the only thing holding the city together, and the siege is getting more complicated even with the arrival of ten thousand Marines. To maintain peace in Orhan's absense, the folks around him find an actor to be his body double. The next book will deal with how Notker-as-Orhan tries to keep things running, or at least keep them from getting any worse, by using Orhan's image but not his expertise. I can see key conflicts around the woman found out to be Orhan's illegitimate daughter, and the main enemy being Orhan's old friend - their personal communication is the only negotiation channel between the warring factions.

 

[SeanF]

1 hour ago, unJon said:

Odd endings is a recurring theme in KJ Parker books. Most are otherwise great. You should check out The Folding Knife next, or maybe The Hammer. 

The Hammer was a tough read.

[Brother Longfoot]

On 3/6/2020 at 10:44 AM, Kyll.Ing. said:

Reading the blurb for the next book on Amazon, I think I can see how it might unravel that ending, actually. This is how I think it tacks onto the first one and will probably continue the story. Spoilers because spoilers.

  Reveal hidden contents

Notker, the hero of the next book, is revealed to be an actor in the blurb. Near the end of Sixteen Ways, Orhan muses on how some actors in town are better at impersonating him than he is himself. I originally thought that line was just a set-up to explain how Orhan couldn't sneak out of town by ordering a gate to open (the guards at the gate are specifically told not to trust Orhan's commands unless he's accompanied by someone they recognize, plus a signed and stamped order, in case of impersonation), but I think it sets up the next book.

So, Orhan dies or is otherwise incapacitated for a long time. Presumably both, the latter before the former. His person was the only thing holding the city together, and the siege is getting more complicated even with the arrival of ten thousand Marines. To maintain peace in Orhan's absense, the folks around him find an actor to be his body double. The next book will deal with how Notker-as-Orhan tries to keep things running, or at least keep them from getting any worse, by using Orhan's image but not his expertise. I can see key conflicts around the woman found out to be Orhan's illegitimate daughter, and the main enemy being Orhan's old friend - their personal communication is the only negotiation channel between the warring factions.

 

I definitely think that's plausible. However, assuming Parker's upcoming book is indeed a sequel, my guess is that Notker will be impersonating 

Spoiler

either the Emperor (actually catatonic unknown to most everyone) or his oldest son (actually dead unknown to almost everyone).  It makes sense to me both because of the novel's title, and because I'd figure that Notker would presumably be a "Blueskin" like the Emperor, not a "Milkface" like Orhan.

 

[Isis]

I've picked up K J Parker again after a break of a few years. In the past month I've read:

Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City

The Devil You Know

Prosper's Demon

The Two of Swords Vol I

The Two of Swords Vol II

Thinking about overlap between stories I was wondering if

the Major Genseric in The Two of Swords is the same one as in Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City? Or a relation?

After I finish vol III I think I only have one more novel and a couple of shorts to be completely up to date with the entire bibliography.

[Maia]

Just finished "Prosper's Demon" and it was kind of "eh"? His shorts/novellas are normally more interesting. Is "Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City" better than "Savages"? Because I was lukewarm about the latter. 

[Bastard of Godsgrace]

21 hours ago, Maia said:

Just finished "Prosper's Demon" and it was kind of "eh"? His shorts/novellas are normally more interesting. Is "Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City" better than "Savages"? Because I was lukewarm about the latter. 

Definitely better, IMHO. "Savages" was rather mediocre, but this is one of the better Parker's novels.

 

[unJon]

I just finished and really enjoyed the new novella My Beautiful Life.