Jump to content

Shattered Sea Trilogy II - Spoilers of "Half a King", "Half a World" & "Half a War"


The hairy bear

Recommended Posts

Read half of it yesterday. Good but a significant decline in the previus books, especially in the first one (I really loved the first book).

Still, it was a nice reading and hoping that the second half of it will be better.

 

I think that Half a World may be the best book in the series, but I think that Abercrombie finished the series very well with this book, while leaving plenty of loose ends if he wishes to write more books in this world.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

I think that Half a World may be the best book in the series, but I think that Abercrombie finished the series very well with this book, while leaving plenty of loose ends if he wishes to write more books in this world.

Half a War suffers greatly from none of its point of view characters being Thorn or Brand, and also having nowhere near enough of Thorn or Brand.  Certainly, as a character-focused book, Half the World is the best of the three by a mile.  Especially since all three of the focal characters in Half a War are differently shaded variations of Yarvi, Thorn, or Brand.  Skara is actually basically Yarvi, but a woman instead of a congenital cripple.

 

It's still a good book, though.  Just not quite near the quality of Half the World.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Half a War suffers greatly from none of its point of view characters being Thorn or Brand, and also having nowhere near enough of Thorn or Brand.  Certainly, as a character-focused book, Half the World is the best of the three by a mile.  Especially since all three of the focal characters in Half a War are differently shaded variations of Yarvi, Thorn, or Brand.

 

It's still a good book, though.  Just not quite near the quality of Half the World.

 

I liked Skara a lot as a character.  I liked too [Spoiler] the revelation that Yarvi is every bit as bad as the people he fought against - although it's the sort of thing I'd expect from the author [/Spoiler]

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

I liked Skara a lot as a character.  I liked too [Spoiler] the revelation that Yarvi is every bit as bad as the people he fought against - although it's the sort of thing I'd expect from the author [/Spoiler]

 

[spoiler]I wonder if Yarvi's arc in the trilogy is similar to how Bayaz became who he is[/spoiler]

Link to comment
Share on other sites

[spoiler]I wonder if Yarvi's arc in the trilogy is similar to how Bayaz became who he is[/spoiler]


[Spoiler] He's still at an age where he can feel remorse for what he did, rather than bragging about his cleverness, like Bayaz. But, he's how I imagine the young Bayaz to have been.

I think that he did plan Brand's death (Yilling's targeting was very specific) and the deaths of Skifr's family (he needed her help). He feels bad about these acts, but he did them. [/Spoiler]
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yarvi is definitely my favorite character in the series. He is basically Glokta and I love Glokta.
 

 

As I've said upthread he reminds me of a young Bayaz but I can see certain elements of Glokta - especially from book one regarding his disabilities.

 

Joe was on fine form at the book signing in Bristol. He had to compete with the weekly "magic" game going on in the shop but served as a decent warm-up.

I didn't have time to do a gathering with fellow fans afterwards and felt bad that i fobbed some one off with a "guess I'll see you in the store some other time". The crowd was about the right side for an informal gathering of like minds too. These kinds of things were easier to arrange in London where the london westeros group was big enough for us to organise such things.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

[Spoiler] He's still at an age where he can feel remorse for what he did, rather than bragging about his cleverness, like Bayaz. But, he's how I imagine the young Bayaz to have been.

I think that he did plan Brand's death (Yilling's targeting was very specific) and the deaths of Skifr's family (he needed her help). He feels bad about these acts, but he did them. [/Spoiler]

 

[spoiler]I agree he did Skifr's family, not so sure about deliberately targeting Brand. Obviously he knew Brand would be there and would likely put himself in harm's way to help others, but I don't think he specifically asked Bright Yilling to kill anyone in particular, just to raid and burn.[/spoiler]

Link to comment
Share on other sites

[spoiler]I agree he did Skifr's family, not so sure about deliberately targeting Brand. Obviously he knew Brand would be there and would likely put himself in harm's way to help others, but I don't think he specifically asked Bright Yilling to kill anyone in particular, just to raid and burn.[/spoiler]


[Spoiler] Brand's street was completely burned out. He knows how Thorn would react to Brand's death, making peace impossible. I'm sure he hated to do it. He's not so far gone that he'll talk smugly about "there's always some natural wastage." But he did it. And, now he's given Thorn his ship. No doubt, there's some remorse there, but it's also a great way of getting her a thousand miles away.

I'm not sure that I'd rate Skara's chances of survival highly. But, she's sharp-witted, and surely knows not to trust him to keep his end of their bargain. [/Spoiler]
Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

As I've said upthread he reminds me of a young Bayaz but I can see certain elements of Glokta - especially from book one regarding his disabilities.

After finishing the book, I have to agree with you. I think that he definitely started as Glokta. His self pity monologues were as similar to Glokta as they can be. As it was him being a survivor. Then on the second book he became totally independent and started masterminding things. By the end of the third book, he was Bayaz.

I like his transformation. I will say that Yarvi is probably Abercrombie's best and most complex character. I adored Glokta and really loved Bayaz (I mean how good the characters were, despite both being scum, especially the later). Yarvi's story has really parallels with Bayaz. It started with him giving the impression that he is looking for the greater good (or at least the lesser evil) but it was all along a game of thrones. In both cases, won spectacularly.

Queen Scara getting her moment over him was a bit surprising and unnatural (although I knew that Scara knew that Yarvi was the traitor from the very beginning), but not everyone can be flawless. In a possible meeting between them in the future, there can be only one winner.

A nice conclusion to the trilogy (which I think is definitely in pair with The First Law despite being different). Although, I have to say that I thought that the quality of the books decreased with each books, but still they are worthy to be read and better than almost everything right there. A testament to Abercrombie's work that even his weaker books are really great.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

For me the issue isn't so much that Half the World and Half a War are necessarily weaker (though Half the World has some middle-book problems and the Thorn/Brand "they like each other and don't know it!" stuff is trite) as that they don't really bring anything new to the table in terms of themes, characterization, setting, or style. As more of the same goes, they're very well done, and I quite enjoyed Half a War, but Half a King does in 270 pages everything the others do in a total of 720. And the insult banter and portentous thematic declarations really start to pall after a while. But so it goes, with fantasy trilogies...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

See, maybe I need to read Half a King again, but on a first read for me Half the World is so much better than Half a King it is not even funny. And Half a King is really good. I found that Half the World had more going on plot-wise in terms of building up the political arena of the Shattered Sea, the character work is great and Abercrombie plays against type more.

 

Thorn's not a pov character in Half a War? Huh, that's too bad; I could have sworn I'd read a blurb that seemed to indicate that while Brand did not return as a pov Thorn did. Shame.

 

I love the way Abercrombie reveals moral equivalency, but the "hey, this one character is as scummy as the people he opposes! surprise!" is becoming a bit of a shtick, at least for me. He does it wonderfully, but at this point the jaw-dropping twist in an Abercrombie novel is when somebody does something that's not totally shite, particularly with reference to the political characters [this does, admittedly, mirror real politics nicely.] So I really look forward to Yarvy's arc in Half a War, because Abercrombie's great at this kind of thing, but I really hope he can distinguish the turns the character makes from the moves made in the characterization of Glokta / Bayaz etc.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

For me the issue isn't so much that Half the World and Half a War are necessarily weaker (though Half the World has some middle-book problems and the Thorn/Brand "they like each other and don't know it!" stuff is trite) as that they don't really bring anything new to the table in terms of themes, characterization, setting, or style. As more of the same goes, they're very well done, and I quite enjoyed Half a War, but Half a King does in 270 pages everything the others do in a total of 720. And the insult banter and portentous thematic declarations really start to pall after a while. But so it goes, with fantasy trilogies...

I don't agree.  Half a King, is, if we were grading, a solid B- book.  Yarvi is never as strong a character as a prince as he is as a minister, but we're only shown the beginning and the end of his coming of age journey with the middle bits pretty much fast forwarded over.  In fact, the most substantial character development we see from him happens in the last 10 or so pages of the book, on the other end of a time skip, and also after another time skip to the next book.  Half a King really is too short, and so everything comes as rushed and not well developed.  Half the World does everything better.  Thorn (particularly her) and Brand are better shaded characters from the outset, and more of their character arcs are shown on the page.  There's much richer worldbuilding, a stronger plot, more interesting supporting characters, and so on and so forth.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Loved it. Really impressed with all the characters. Especially the sheer variety of female characters, which is all the more impressive given how 99% of other authors would handle a similar cod-Viking setting.

[spoiler]And ffs, the main princess ends up having an abortion and not regretting it, I bet that'll go down a treat in the US market :lol: [/spoiler]

eta: now rereading Half a World - I think the correct reading order for this series has to be 1 - 2 - 1 - 3 - 2, cos now I need to go back and remind myself of the first appearances of whichever previously minor characters came to prominence in the last book, like Blue Jenner...
Link to comment
Share on other sites

eta: now rereading Half a World - I think the correct reading order for this series has to be 1 - 2 - 1 - 3 - 2, cos now I need to go back and remind myself of the first appearances of whichever previously minor characters came to prominence in the last book, like Blue Jenner...

 

Lol. This is almost reminiscent of the seasonal "what's the best order to read the First law series in"?

I deliberately played the game of "book 3 POV" while reading book 2. I'll soon find out how close I was to being right. For the record [spoiler] I thought the kid on the ship with them and the young princess at the end of the voyage were the prime candidates. There was a kid Brand started training too but I thought they'd be too similar [/spoiler]

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'd also like to throw in a Walter White comparison to Yarvi based on the first two books. Hopefully he doesn't fully follow Walt's arc!


He has, pretty much. Even Walter felt remorse for some of his actions. I could easily envisage Yarvi telling an antagonist "If you're right, and you don't know who I am, then perhaps your best course .......... Is to tread lightly."
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...