The Axe and the Throne (Spoilers)

[Traverys]

Just wondering if anyone else gave this novel a try? I thought it was particularly pertinent since, in my opinion, it's is (a little too) heavily influenced by A Song of Ice and Fire.

Forewarning: I usually review books pretty critically... Character arcs, prose, pacing, structure, dialogue, literary elements and things like these are usually how I gauge the quality of the author and their work.

The "Warning"

For starters, the thing that really irked me the most was the "Warning" at the beginning of the book:

"The Axe and the Throne is not intended for mass consumption. It is a challenging read, both in complexity and content."

If I could use an emoji right now it'd be the "unamused face." I can see this kind of warning justified at the beginning of a Malazan novel, but it's still quite pretentious...

The rest transitioned me from unamused emoji, to rolling eyes emoji:

"Even self-proclaimed lovers of grimdark often find themselves offended when otherwise kind and intelligent characters choose to embrace barbarism and bigotry. Without the benefit of overt good and evil, witnessing protagonists fail to fulfill the roles of heroism dictated by modern culture can prove too much for some. Perhaps more offensive is the sheer number of perspectives. It is a limited audience that enjoys making sense of what others consider merely frustrating, but for nimble readers with a thirst for more than linear adventure, this may be what is sought."

So... from his perspective he just said: My book can be too dark for grimdark lovers because (1) my characters can be mean and selfish, (2) my world has no good and evil, (3) my world has no real heroes, (4) my characters all have individualistic perspectives, (5) my characters will frustrate most people, and (6) my novel can only be appreciated by "nimble readers."

Wait... isn't 1-5 just reiterating some of the fundamental elements of basic grimdark (while #6 is just you tooting your own horn)? Yes, I realize I'm coming down pretty hard on a debuting author...

POVs

The reason I bought this novel was because it utilized POV chapters (like ASoIaF), which is a perspective I really like in fiction and one I like to use myself. The tricky part is in the actual selection of which POVs to include: who has the most interesting perspective in each scene you create? Ireman falls so flat in this regard...

The biggest critique I have is that he usually keeps pairs of characters together and uses both of them as POV characters. The usual dynamic is that one of the pair plans to betray the other... Titan VS Keethro, Titon (Jr.) VS Decker, Ethel VS Annora, and Cassen VS Everyone else.

The Wildling Northmen (raiders that live in snowy terrain) POVs are easily the most troublesome for me. Titon (senior) and his "friend" Keethro traveling south is not particularly engrossing to begin with... Keethro is biding his time, waiting for the perfect opportunity to betray and kill his companion. Titon... well really don't add any new perspective that would justify needing to see anything from his perspective. We get little snippets here and there about his thoughts regarding his sons, but his sons are well aware of what he thinks of them (as we learn in their chapters). Picking one perspective would have been much more sophisticated and would allow for great tension to be built... If Ireman had chose Keethro, we would be wondering if Titon is beginning suspicious of his plans. If he chose to only use Titon's POV, then we would wonder if what Keethro says or does is somehow foreshadowing a betrayal or something along those lines. Instead... we know exactly what both characters think and so there is no tension.

When you pair up POVs like that, there has to be something about that dynamic that adds to the plot, if not the tension. There was a novel I read based in the Mage: The Ascension (tabletop game) world: The Road to Hell. One half of the narrative included the POVs of two accomplished scientists put in charge of teams from different "conventions" (fields) of science and given orders to collaborate on a top secret project. Unfortunately, their fields were philosophically opposed to one another -- one convention preferred keeping the body and life organic (albeit genetically engineered to perfection) while the other focused on augmenting the body with mechanical implants and prostheses. From their first chapters, it was clear they both planned to betray and kill the other and their respective teams once the project was complete. It created a thrilling dynamic: Who was going to come out on top? Who deserves to win more --or-- which would be the lesser of two evils?

You don't get anything like this from Keethro and Titon, or any of the other paired POVs mentioned above. The way they are utilized eliminates one of the major advantages of 3rd person limited: unreliable narrators and imperfect information.

Cassen... Oh Cassen... He's probably the most interesting POV character in the book, but also the most directly borrowed from ASoIaF. He's a eunuch "dutchess" [sic] that simpers and giggles, and is a secretly plotting against everyone. I guess Ireman thought the big reveal that Cressen was just pretending to be a eunuch constituted a major plot twist... There's nothing wrong with having similar characters, but Cassen is just too much of a Varys clone. You can look at the characters of Theon Greyjoy/Reek (AsoIaF) and Glotka (First Law Trilogy) as an example of how to make characters with similar backstories different. Both were handsome, noble lordlings with a bright future until they were tortured and mutilated into disfigured horrors. While Reek becomes docile and subservient (and a little insane), Glotka instead becomes a torturer himself. The nature of their torture was of course different, but that was an author choice and they followed through with it to logical conclusions. Cassen seems to want to put himself on the throne (hence the importance of his genitals still being intact?) whereas Varys seems to want to put someone of his liking on the throne... it's really not much of a different in my mind.

I'll get around to posting more on this book. Post is long already. I'm curious if anyone else has actually read it or if I was the only sucker out there!

[aceluby]

I listened to it while doing a cross country road trip.  I agree with pretty much everything you've written.  Wasn't even interested in getting the sequel because all of the characters were 2 dimensional and derivative.  I also hated that it seemed to use rape as a sort of 'grimdark street-cred'.  

[Traverys]

1 hour ago, aceluby said:

I listened to it while doing a cross country road trip.  I agree with pretty much everything you've written.  Wasn't even interested in getting the sequel because all of the characters were 2 dimensional and derivative.  I also hated that it seemed to use rape as a sort of 'grimdark street-cred'.  

Yeah... That's actually a huge pet-peeve of mine too. It's one of the most heinous crimes humans can commit against one another... Take it seriously or leave it out. 

I don't recall any male rape victims in the story either? That one usually bothers me, simply because crimes against humanity like that are fairly equal opportunity for victims. In history around the world it's been a fairly common method of emasculating, humiliating, and breaking the spirit of your enemies, captives, or whoever you feel like doing that kind of thing to. And no one would see you as gay, because that label went to the person on the receiving end. Hell, that kind of thing still happens frequently in prison systems of both genders.

I think it's specifically derivative of ASoIaF in a lot of ways...

• The Northmen are basically just Wildlings. He could have wove another culture into his world-building to differentiate them more. Asian honor codes, Native American totemism/animism... anything. But he either didn't or couldn't think outside of the box on that one... Hell, why did it even have to be snowy? It was vital to any other area of the plot.
• As mentioned, Cassen is a rip off of Varys.
• Stephon is a ripoff of Joffrey.
• Alther's demise was a ripoff of Eddard, as be becomes a victim of Stephon in a public spectacle. However, author didn't even think to set this execution in any place of legitimacy in the city like the Great Sept...
• Most of the swear words and vulgar slang are slight modifications of what GRRM uses. "Mountains mercy!"
• I could probably think of more given the time. Those are just the obvious ones to me.

Something else bothersome is the lack of female characters with impact... It actually says a lot about some of the other things going with his writing... He didn't even try to rip some of the strong female leads from GRRM.

I guess this should all be expected with how mainstream ASoIaF/GoT has become. I'm surprised we haven't seen more works that draw on GRRM's, tbh. Maybe there is. This is the only one I've come across.

 

[Darth Richard II]

Yeah if you see something on amazon published by create space, that should be your first two or three warning bells.