Shattered Sea Trilogy (aka 'So much for Abercrombie's sabbatical')

[red snow]

amazon uk have a great pre-order price for the book at £5 for the moment. Shame their pre-order promise doesn't work for e vs book. Although I guess I could cancel the pre-order and buy the hard copy.

[Tinker]

It is available in Australia now.

[Ebenstone]

I finished it. Stellar. The MC is very Tyrion-esque...here's my review:

http://johnzeleznik.blogspot.com/2014/06/book-review-half-king-by-joe-abercrombie.html

[Jussi]

Shattered Sea is the official name of the new trilogy:

http://www.joeabercrombie.com/2014/06/24/progress-report-june-14/

[Ranger275]

When I first read that Abercrombie was writing a YA novel, I laughed.

I imagined the protagonist as an ill-behaved nine year old, famous in his home town for bullying, farting, and burning bags of shit on the doors of his rivals. The Shitty Nine (year old). Somewhere, there's a Dogboy, famous for pissing on things and an already-in-puberty giant, the first of their crew to be sexually active, named Tul Todd Thundercrotch. I'm sure you could fit in a kid with cerebral palsy who plucks the legs off of insects and is currently in the phase where kids lose all of their teeth.

Regardless, he's going to get my money. He (unintentionally) spread Abercrombie'isms across great swaths of the Middle East, and I'm looking forward to more.

[The hairy bear]

Just finished today. Since it was incredibly short, I limited myself to one part per day.

I found it an excellent read. I didn't enjoy it as much as the previous Abecrombie work, but I would have loved this book twenty years ago and I'm sure it'll help recruiting many YA to our cause! :commie:

For me, the main difference with the rest of Abercrombie's work was not the lack of sex or swearing, but the predictability. Most of the developments I saw coming for a mile: Odem's betrayal, Nothing's identity, the deaths of Ankran and Jaud... Although, to be fair, I didn't anticipate Mother Gundring's part and the last chapter was the best part of the book, IMO.

[Mexal]

Just finished today. Since it was incredibly short, I limited myself to one part per day.

I found it an excellent read. I didn't enjoy it as much as the previous Abecrombie work, but I would have loved this book twenty years ago and I'm sure it'll help recruiting many YA to our cause! :commie:

For me, the main difference with the rest of Abercrombie's work was not the lack of sex or swearing, but the predictability. Most of the developments I saw coming for a mile: Odem's betrayal, Nothing's identity, the deaths of Ankran and Jaud... Although, to be fair, I didn't anticipate Mother Gundring's part and the last chapter was the best part of the book, IMO.

Yea, that was my thoughts as well. Definitely more predictable than normal. I really enjoyed the read though, took me roughly a day since I got delayed 2.5 hours on my flight.

[Brendan Moody]

I also agree with the spoiler-coded estimate of what was and wasn't predictable.

I really think more could have been done to make Nothing's identity a surprise; between the abruptness of the oath, his hedging when Yarvi asked about it later, and the title of the final part, it was all too obvious what was coming.

[Yersinia]

I'm ashamed to admit I didn't see this coming at all.

By the time Nothing was introduced I had completely forgotten about the long-lost uncle, but I loved how Yarvi inadvertently helped put a complete madman on the throne and into his mother's bed.

[Rhom]

Stopped in Barnes and Noble today and picked up Half a King, took me forever to find it and had to ask a worker there to track it down... I kept looking in the "New Teen Fantasy" section (which is huge by the way) and couldn't find it; then went over to the Fantasy section by alphabeticals and saw all the First Law books by Abercrombie. Finally after I asked they pointed it out to me, they had one copy left and it was in the general New Fantasy section.

So I guess that feeds back into earlier discussion in this thread on what constitutes "Young Adult" and how you manage to get onto those shelves? There were plenty of books about assassins and mages and whatnot there, so I guess I'm just not quite clear on where Abercrombie gets slotted.

[Yersinia]

I got the impression from Abercrombie's post earlier on this thread that a lot of it is up to publishers and how they choose to market the books. I imagine that influences how bookstores arrange them.

But I've spent very little time in actual physical bookstores since I got a Kindle, so for all I know they've just started putting all the books in a big pile...

[Rhom]

I got the impression from Abercrombie's post earlier on this thread that a lot of it is up to publishers and how they choose to market the books. I imagine that influences how bookstores arrange them.

But I've spent very little time in actual physical bookstores since I got a Kindle, so for all I know they've just started putting all the books in a big pile...

That's honestly not far from the truth for certain sections of the store...

[Real Heir of Bear Island]

I finished the book this morning. I agree with some of the posters. It was a bit more predicable than some of his other works though it didn't upset me. I like being able to somewhat call it.

A simple story following just one POV is nice to read every once in a while. Despite the one POV, Joe still managed to create a supporting cast of three dimensional characters. It was an overall fun read.

I'm looking forward to the rest of the series. I can rest assured knowing the next will be out in 6 months and then the final book 6 months after.

[BigFatCoward]

while i really enjoyed it none of the characters particularly grabbed me the way his first law characters do.

[Yersinia]

Superficially it reminded me of Best Served Cold, minus the four-letter words and delightfully earthy, unromantic sex scenes. Also, I wanted this protagonist to succeed rather than fail at his quest.

I was intrigued by the apparent

post-apocalyptic far-future

setting.

[Rhom]

Finished up. An enjoyable read all around.

Glad to see that Half the World is due for release so soon. Considering that Half a War is the third book, it really leaves me wondering what the second book is about.

Presumably a heightening of the hinted at conflict in the first book, but I don't understand how a war can be pushed back that far at this point. Ah well... Guess I will find out in about Half a Year. :lol:

[Frank Fitzpatrick]

Finished it last week. I really enjoyed it. Perhaps not quite as much as some of his other books like The First Law and Heroes but that's not so much a negative, rather a compliment to how high Abercrombie's standard of work is. Anyway, the whole uproar about it being "YA" was completely unfounded in my opinion. Sure it was slightly cleaner in terms of curse-words but there was still a heck of a lot of violence etc..

Everyone should buy it and give it a go if they haven't already.

[Jussi]

From Reddit AMA:

If Half a King is the story of a boy who prevails by adopting a woman's role, the Half the World is the story of a girl who is dead set on adopting a man's...

There are two new points of view in the second book, while Yarvi is an important secondary character. So time moves on a couple of years, but the points of view remain in that 16-18 age range. The overall story continues, but Yarvi drops into the background and there is a different focus.

The idea was always to take a single POV for Half a King, just by way of variety, and more suitable for a shorter, tighter work. The second book, Half the World, has two POVs, the third has three.

[Rhom]

I remember very clearly when Sumael is discussing the constellations, she points out about a half dozen of them and one of those was Stranger-Come-Knocking. Were there any other First Law shout outs that I didn't catch?

[thistlepong]

He didn't mention whether the third PoV in Half a War was Yarvi reinserted, did he? One of the Half the World PoVs seems obvious, bt I'm not sure who the other is.