Well it’s been a while. Abercrombie is in fine form, perhaps a little too cute, a little too arch, and a little too reliant on dredging up another joke from the same well, but I enjoyed it all the way through. A lot of fun, even if some developments are rather obvious. I do wish Abercrombie would do a little more reading on HEMA to inform his writing, it’s still very Hollywood with lots of huge hacking swings and little armour usage, but the action is still well-written. Solid effort.
This was fun. A pair of everyday workers find an aggressive fungus in their former government weapon storage turned storage business. Written in a slightly wry tone, with some rather haphazard jokes, it is nevertheless a light and amusing, if gory, read. A little too good-natured, but otherwise fine. I am looking forward to the film.
Not ever going to pick on Rosson’s prose, but the choices here (an odd timeskip at a particularly important point, in particular, and the character development that is then elided) regarding the plotting are confusing and suboptimal. Also not a fan of the stereotypical Vietnam vet experience, which seems to have been hauled from the big generic bin of PTSD all writers have laying around. That aside, it’s a touching story of a man and his niece seeking revenge, and takes some new turns in doing so. Some really beautiful moments, and great prose all the way through.
4 Likes
Are all of Abercrombie’s books in the same universe? I read the First Law trilogy and enjoyed it well enough.
Off the top of my head, they all are except The Devils.
1 Like
While Horns almost killed me, NOS4R2 lost me slightly, and The Fireman practically shit on my shoes. And, here, not that much has changed. I don’t really feel the tight circle of friends across the decades, complete with odd timeskips (oh how they cover a multitude of sins!), has aged well since It, and I feel resentful of the privileged set up in the first place (how do your afford years searching for myths and legends in the UK, as a poor wage slave from the US? The answer is: you don’t). I found some of the intra-group dialogue especially cringe, and had nothing but distasteful thoughts for two characters especially, one of whom was inherently good, and one of whom was inherently evil. I wish I liked this book more, but it has some odd mis-steps all the way throughout, from the incongruity of calling up a dragon as if it were a ghost, to the weird stagnant personalities that didn’t develop due to their money, opportunities (?), education (??), and experiences (???). I suppose some of that is accurate. The more I think about this book, the stronger my puzzled disappointment becomes.
2 Likes
Two and a half years later, I have read There is No Antimemetics Division.
Had I read it in 2023, I would have described it as a Covid novel. Now we’re deep in the Trump era, a novel about incomprehensible ideas coming out of nowhere to destroy civilisation by destroying memory seems too much on the nose.
I hate living in historically significant times. I’m going to go back to reading Proto, by Laura Spinney, about the history and descent of Proto-Indo-European, in which nothing discernible happens in centuries other than the invention of the wheel, agriculture and bronze smelting, and people making up new words to describe them.
6 Likes