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Joe Abercrombie: You Say you want a revolution [SPOILERS including the new sample chapter]


Darzin
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On 3/11/2024 at 2:53 PM, Rhom said:

Yeah, I wouldn't call it YA at all.  Unless your book needs to have graphic on page sex; then its still very much Abercrombie.  Still violent.  Still a wry sense of humor.  Still well paced and written.

I really enjoyed it.  There were some similarities with the Broken Empire series from Mark Lawrence in that they are both post-apocalyptic Europe.  

If you like Joe, its definitely worth a read.

Have to disagree with that take. Shattered Sea felt noticably different and much less interesting to me than his other works, I definitely noticed a different style and characterization. Its not on the level of the books that came before it. Is it super young adult? No. But the characterization is definitely a lot more young adult than his other books, that is clear.

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18 hours ago, polishgenius said:

 

I doubt that. Firstly, Lamb being who he is was deeply central both to the Unforgiven tribute he was doing and to several key scenes within the plot specifically. You could have done the first part with a fresh character- Unforgiven did, after all- but not the second and in any case it was just too fundamentally a story about him.

Secondly, all three standalone books feature previous characters popping up. Indeed so does the sequel trilogy. It's just something Abercrombie does, I dunno why the criticism applies in particular to Red Country. I do get why that would bother people, I've had that issue with other books and series- but Abercrombie's books aren't aiming for realism, there's an underlying sense of theatricality and self-awareness to them, so it didn't feel like a problem to me at all. 

 

 

Anyway I'm in the 'Heroes was best BSC was least best' crowd. I just felt BSC had one too many goes round the 'move on to the next target' carousel - it got a bit repetitive in the middle before it pulled it together for the end. 

The bit where he kills the kidnappers in the "shithole bar" reminded me a lot of Unforgiven, his riding away at the end reminded me of Shane.

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21 hours ago, Clueless Northman said:

The only real issue with The Heroes is that you just can't recommend it to your friends as "one of the best Fantasy books ever", because it still would be best if they actually read the 4 previous books to fully enjoy it.

It was the first one I read. 

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3 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

It was the first one I read. 

4th for me. I had read the original trilogy first.

Then before a long flight I bought The Heroes (Best Served Cold wasn’t in stock)

It was interesting finding Shivers so jaded and with only one eye in The Heroes. Then reading BSC afterwards and discovering how he came to be that way. 

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