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

[Jon AS]

only thing i'm not sure about, if it is so easy to train someone to be that shit hot, why not train everyone?

What gave you the impression there was anything easy about it? Thorn clearly had a lot of potential, as well as being stubborn and desperate enough not to give up throughout the gruelling ordeal. Most people, even (or especially) most warriors of the Shattered Sea, would probably not put up with that kind of treatment for long.

[BigFatCoward]

What gave you the impression there was anything easy about it? Thorn clearly had a lot of potential, as well as being stubborn and desperate enough not to give up throughout the gruelling ordeal. Most people, even (or especially) most warriors of the Shattered Sea, would probably not put up with that kind of treatment for long.

at first she got her arse handed to her by brand, then she was invincible. it took about a year iirc.

also, in that sort of society its not like people have a lot of choice if they are told to train all day, they get too it.

[Mars447]

at first she got her arse handed to her by brand, then she was invincible. it took about a year iirc.

also, in that sort of society its not like people have a lot of choice if they are told to train all day, they get too it.

You still need a shieldwall. She fights outside of it.

Plus not everyone has Thorn's speed, power, or the willingness to go through the necessary conditioning. It took months of intensive, one-on-one training for her to become battle ready. It's not something you can easily drill into a bunch of recruits.

[Jon AS]

at first she got her arse handed to her by brand, then she was invincible. it took about a year iirc.

also, in that sort of society its not like people have a lot of choice if they are told to train all day, they get too it.

She did pretty well in traditional training.

And said training was something they volunteered for, Brand even had to work really hard for it. Thorn's extremely harsh training (which also focussed on a completely different fighting style) began after her life had been put completely in Yarvi's hands. Her alternatives were pretty much train or die.

[BigFatCoward]

i think you read a different book i did. when i read it she was meh, then she was the finest warrior in the world.

[peterbound]

i think you read a different book i did. when i read it she was meh, then she was the finest warrior in the world.

While he didn't write a whole book about the training she went through, it was there. Shit man, a year of even light training everyday will make you pretty fucking bad ass. Find something you are good at, or built for, and work at it with dedication? A year is going to make you something special.

[TheRevanchist]

i think you read a different book i did. when i read it she was meh, then she was the finest warrior in the world.

She had high potential (doing well against three recruits of her age) but yeah, to be transformed within a year from a novice to arguably the second best warrior of that part of the world wasn't much believable. In these kind of books, it generally takes far more time for a warrior to reach that level.

[HexMachina]

She was training for hours every day though. And when she wasn't training, she was pulling an oar, so she was never really idle. I don't think its that unbelievable particularly given the level of skill she already had (because not all of the training was about "new" skills, but learning the best way to make use of existing ones - thinking of the never beat a strong man with brute force thing here)

[BigFatCoward]

whatever, i can't think of a single thing on earth you can be the best at with a years training. the accepted amount of time i've heard to be an expert (not the best person in the universe) is 10,000 hours. so if she worked out for 30 hours a day every day for a year she may have had the necessary skils. ps i'm so drunk i can hardly see so i apologise for spelling and grammar.

[Jon AS]

I think we're straying into spoiler territory here, so...

There's no reason to think she's the best in the world. She's better than a bunch of people who invest way less time into training, sure, but when she meets the scariest fighter in her neck of the woods in single combat she loses.

One of the themes of the book is how stories grow into legends with relative ease. Yes, she does some impressive stuff, but if it weren't for Brand she would have died multiple times. Yet after they're back home, even Brand's feat of stopping the ship gets attributed to her.

[MerenthaClone]

whatever, i can't think of a single thing on earth you can be the best at with a years training. the accepted amount of time i've heard to be an expert (not the best person in the universe) is 10,000 hours. so if she worked out for 30 hours a day every day for a year she may have had the necessary skils. ps i'm so drunk i can hardly see so i apologise for spelling and grammar.

So I haven't finished the book yet (and am avoiding the spoilers) so forgive me if something happens that actually does show her to be literally the best person in the universe. With 3 years of semi-casual training I ended up in roughly the top 5% in the US in fencing. Amazing? No, but good enough that I could justifiably walk into most events and expect to beat most of the people there. That'll get you through a lot of things without making you "the best" and I think there is something similar here. She doesn't need to be the best for it to work in the story, just better than the people she runs into, which, because of how being "the best" in any given room is, means she could be defeating several champions that aren't actually close to an entire world's worth of victors, just the local "best". Yes, I know there are totally different circumstances (like, say, fencing isn't literally how I feed my family) but remember too that most people in this weird pseudo-Viking society aren't actually full-time warriors and cannot spend most, or even a lot, of their time training under someone who is an actual expert. Give her training in dueling/fighting one-on-one as opposed to fighting in a unit and she'll be in her forte against other people who aren't.

Also, (setting spoilers)

The Shattered Sea is clearly the Baltic, but what damn river is the Divine? Its been bothering me all book.

e: To be clearer, my point is that while I was never anywhere close to the best by any stretch, I was closer to it than most in the areas I ended up. Its easy to be better than most people. It just gets harder and harder the further up the scale you go. (Also, where I am in the book, she's

currently training much, much harder than a crew of good warriors. They don't train at all during the sailing because they're busy sailing and shit. She does train. Constantly.

[TheRevanchist]

I think we're straying into spoiler territory here, so...

There's no reason to think she's the best in the world. She's better than a bunch of people who invest way less time into training, sure, but when she meets the scariest fighter in her neck of the woods in single combat she loses.

One of the themes of the book is how stories grow into legends with relative ease. Yes, she does some impressive stuff, but if it weren't for Brand she would have died multiple times. Yet after they're back home, even Brand's feat of stopping the ship gets attributed to her.

Well, she almost defeated the guy with an unspellable name who has been clearly mentioned as the best on that part of the world. So, while not the best, she's clearly on the very top of elite fighters. For example, her ex-master didn't dared to fight her when she challenged him on the last chapter. And also, defeating 5 highly professional warriors with just a knife (right?) was pretty crazy. So going from a noive with high potential to that kind of warrior within 12 months is something that even Luke Skywalker would have been proud of.

I like Abercrombie because he makes the characters very believable but I think that Thorn was an exception.

[BigFatCoward]

I think we're straying into spoiler territory here, so...

when she meets the scariest fighter in her neck of the woods in single combat she loses.r.

just

[Corvinus85]

The only thing I have to say about Thorn is that I imagined her as the girl who plays Thorunn (English spelling?) on Vikings. Anyone else?

[unJon]

I take the point on Thorn leveling so quickly but she didn't start at bottom, she beat Bran in their first encounter at training. Also when the book opens she has potential but has been trained to fight like a man, which is explained to be completely wrong for her. So she starts with a great base then gets to run up the steep part of the curve because of the new fighting technique designed precisely for her strengths to beat men trained to fight like Vikings.

Believable. Dunno, but not as unbelievable as some are giving credit for.

[CryHavoc]

Also, (setting spoilers)

The Shattered Sea is clearly the Baltic, but what damn river is the Divine? Its been bothering me all book.

Wild Geographical Speculation:

I think it's the Daugava (Western Dvina, which could have easily turned into "Divine"). It's a little confusing because the geography is altered enough that it's hard to tell what's going on with the Gulf of Finland and the Gulf of Riga. There used to be a major trade route going across the Baltic, up the Gulf of Finland, through Lake Ladoga, several rivers, and a portage before reaching the Daugava and then up, across another portage, down the Dnieper, and on the Black Sea to Byzantium (presumably the First of Cities).

Looking at the map and assuming Lanagrad comes from Leningrad, it looks like significant chunks of Finland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania are under water and the Gulfs of Riga and Finland are much less...gulfy. Since they're definitely hopping onto the river way south of what used to be the Gulf of Finland, I think they may be just getting onto the (quite possibly altered) Daugava directly near a distorted ex- Gulf of Riga.

[Mars447]

Well, she almost defeated the guy with an unspellable name who has been clearly mentioned as the best on that part of the world. So, while not the best, she's clearly on the very top of elite fighters. For example, her ex-master didn't dared to fight her when she challenged him on the last chapter. And also, defeating 5 highly professional warriors with just a knife (right?) was pretty crazy. So going from a noive with high potential to that kind of warrior within 12 months is something that even Luke Skywalker would have been proud of.

I like Abercrombie because he makes the characters very believable but I think that Thorn was an exception.

Grom-Gil-Gorm is the best at the style of fighting he does, so Thorn fights him doing something completely different, and still she loses (she might want to carry around a spare sword). Master Hunnam is a washed up has-been whose prime fighting days are long in the past. He can't fight anymore, and he knows it, and he might be able to teach his students how to stand in the wall and die but he's still a terrible teacher as well, which is probably why he takes his frustrations out on his students. She takes down 5 soldiers (who, as palace guardsmen, are likely to train hard but less likely to actually

fight) by acting liked a scared girl and then surprising the first three and then gets swamped by the fifth and disabled and almost killed by the sixth. I think she's a believably skilled fighter who uses a style not many of her opponents know how to counter.

[White Walker Texas Ranger]

So I haven't finished the book yet (and am avoiding the spoilers) so forgive me if something happens that actually does show her to be literally the best person in the universe. With 3 years of semi-casual training I ended up in roughly the top 5% in the US in fencing. Amazing? No, but good enough that I could justifiably walk into most events and expect to beat most of the people there. That'll get you through a lot of things without making you "the best" and I think there is something similar here. She doesn't need to be the best for it to work in the story, just better than the people she runs into, which, because of how being "the best" in any given room is, means she could be defeating several champions that aren't actually close to an entire world's worth of victors, just the local "best". Yes, I know there are totally different circumstances (like, say, fencing isn't literally how I feed my family) but remember too that most people in this weird pseudo-Viking society aren't actually full-time warriors and cannot spend most, or even a lot, of their time training under someone who is an actual expert. Give her training in dueling/fighting one-on-one as opposed to fighting in a unit and she'll be in her forte against other people who aren't.

Also, (setting spoilers)

The Shattered Sea is clearly the Baltic, but what damn river is the Divine? Its been bothering me all book.

e: To be clearer, my point is that while I was never anywhere close to the best by any stretch, I was closer to it than most in the areas I ended up. Its easy to be better than most people. It just gets harder and harder the further up the scale you go. (Also, where I am in the book, she's

currently training much, much harder than a crew of good warriors. They don't train at all during the sailing because they're busy sailing and shit. She does train. Constantly.

The thing is that fencing is a rare sport nowadays. You could not train for three years and end up in the top five percent in Brazilian Jitsu, Boxing, Basketball, Chess, or even Starcraft, unless you had absurd natural talent. Sure most people in this world can't train full time, but it is literally life and death for a lot of people so I imagine more of them train full time in combat than people train full time fencing in modern times.

That said, the fact that Thorn was trained in a style that didn't suit her body type by a man who was clearly not interested in training her well and was still the second best in her group does indicate that she was an extraordinary talent, though maybe not to the extent that she displayed later. In addition she had the killer instincts that people like Brand, who was content to push at the wall and shove his sword blindly through the gaps, didn't.

So in short she was a once in a generation physical talent and the mentality of a killer. I'm not sure Yarvi could have known that, but he got lucky.

[Brandon Stark]

Not in the old city centre around the Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque, no, but the city is much bigger than that these days. There are 15 million people living in the metropolitan area, plus stuff like the two big bridges that span the Bosphorus. You'd expect some of that to merit a mention as elf ruins.

Based on the description of the geography as raised and sticking out into the water, could the city center and palace be centered around Topkapi Palace?

just

Hey, maybe he wasn't on cocaine tea.

[Jon AS]

Wild Geographical Speculation:

I think it's the Daugava (Western Dvina, which could have easily turned into "Divine"). It's a little confusing because the geography is altered enough that it's hard to tell what's going on with the Gulf of Finland and the Gulf of Riga. There used to be a major trade route going across the Baltic, up the Gulf of Finland, through Lake Ladoga, several rivers, and a portage before reaching the Daugava and then up, across another portage, down the Dnieper, and on the Black Sea to Byzantium (presumably the First of Cities).

Looking at the map and assuming Lanagrad comes from Leningrad, it looks like significant chunks of Finland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania are under water and the Gulfs of Riga and Finland are much less...gulfy. Since they're definitely hopping onto the river way south of what used to be the Gulf of Finland, I think they may be just getting onto the (quite possibly altered) Daugava directly near a distorted ex- Gulf of Riga.

What I'm wondering is what language people are supposed to be speaking. That name becoming "Divine" makes a certain kind of sense in English, but that's not the first language for most people living there today.

Based on the description of the geography as raised and sticking out into the water, could the city center and palace be centered around Topkapi Palace?

That's the historic part I'm talking about, the part of the city that was ancient Constantinople (the Topkapi palace is very close to the Hagia Sophia). It's only a tiny area in the massive urban sprawl that is contemporary Istanbul.