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I really liked Morveer. The way his background gets darker and darker. Probably foolish of me but until the completely idiotic betrayal he and his apprentice were some of my favorite characters. Seriously duder, you go to all this trouble to train an apprentice, someone to carry on your legacy, then you gently caress it all up. I don't know, it just seems like even if you are a master poisoner you should trust someone sometime at some point. Just be like "I'm teaching you all this, and I will never poison you." Or something, because it seems really dumb to go to all the trouble of training someone you don't trust even a little bit.
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| # ¿ Aug 15, 2010 21:38 |
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| # ¿ May 25, 2013 09:27 |
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Well until the "god" dude in the south makes more. Really though the Eaters make sense in the setting. It's basically a showdown between the two remaining powers winner take all. Ordinary people are supposed to be pawns. They aren't aware of that ideally, but they don't matter. Whichever one of the powers wins will just remake the world in their image anyway. Hopefully Monza and the kingdom that gets created as a result will be enough to tip the balance back in humanity's favor. With any luck Eaters won't be viewpoint characters anymore though. Because it is boring to read about people being killed in the blink of an eye.
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| # ¿ Oct 8, 2011 11:21 |
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Awesome that they put Logen on the cover. Maybe he'll run into demongirl from the trilogy.
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| # ¿ Apr 14, 2012 14:18 |
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They'll probably be more like arquebuses. So folks with swords still have a chance to mess your day up, as long as you miss that first time. Lets Abercrombie have cowboys and claymores which is pretty much the best way to do fantasy. The problem with Bayaz is he doesn't seem to have any ideas about what he wants civilization to look like. The Union is a completely re-active empire, the Gurkish are the people doing new and exciting things with science. Sure that changes in The Heroes awesome cannons! but it doesn't change the fact that the Union is stagnant.
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| # ¿ May 22, 2012 10:00 |
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The most amazing part is how comically inept Bayaz is. I mean sure you wouldn't tell him that to his face, what with the organs of your body being turned into scorpions or whatnot, but he is just so clearly ill-equipped to do anything. (Besides be an immortal prick.) Glokta would do a better job being an immortal puppet master. FFS Logen would do a better job being an immortal puppet master. (I hope in the next book he's just completely casual about heights. Uses cliffs as shortcuts, jumps off houses onto horses, that kind of thing. The climactic scene is him grabbing the antagonist and just straight walking off a huge drop with a grim grin on his face.)
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| # ¿ Jun 4, 2012 10:37 |
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As a counterpoint/proof of that belief (depending on taste) China Mieville's civilizations tend to be pretty unique. The city that gambles everything including laws, High Cromlech which is basically an undead aristocracy, (people save up to get liched, everybody pities the vampires) Tesh which is basically run by divinely inspired madness (they go to war with New Crobuzon because of a nightmare) and Armada. Armada is the closest, with parallels to Tortuga and the Barbary states. The trick is to mash up different times and different cultures. The warring city states of Italy become way more interesting if the Vikings are next door and have just unified. Victorian era England could actually be interesting if you replace France with Persia and Germany with China under the emperors that kind of thing. People have done pretty much every thing you can do (barring the introduction of new tech) at one time or another so the thing to do is see what happens when you juxtapose.
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| # ¿ Jun 5, 2012 09:53 |
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No it isn't. It's made clear through others reaction to him in the novels themselves that an immortal rear end in a top hat running roughshod over them is the last thing they want. Bayaz' refusal to go back to the mud due to his overwhelming hubris is the last thing any of the characters expect or know how to deal with. He is literally a pointy hat stamping on their faces forever. Your earlier statement about people preferring dictators to chaos is laughably incorrect. Why do you think the dictators keep getting overthrown and nations keep descending into chaos? It isn't because chaos is the natural order of things, it's because the rulers lose the mandate of heaven or whatever other metaphor people use to describe exactly how much poo poo they will put up with before they'll murder the gently caress out of every rear end in a top hat in charge. Read an actual book on the rise and fall of nations, please. The only thing that makes living in a dictatorship bearable is the sure and certain knowledge that even the God-King is mortal. That's why Bayaz doesn't rule openly, that's why he sets up systems of oppression such as the banks, and that's why the ultimate ending of the series will be his victory over the Gurkish followed by his defeat at the hands of peasants. He's made himself obvious too to many people to be the power in the shadows for much longer. Peztopiary fucked around with this message at Jun 14, 2012 around 08:10 |
| # ¿ Jun 14, 2012 08:06 |
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| # ¿ May 25, 2013 09:27 |
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I actually liked this better than Heroes. It is a western though, in that it wants you to understand that the people you are meeting all have reasons for making this trip out to the far frontier. I didn't really feel like anyone who had a vignette devoted to them didn't deserve it. The whole point of Shy's constant references to blood in her past was to give people a good contrast with Logen. Dude's a psycho, and Abercrombie wants people to remember that. It's a little heavy handed, but given people's tendency to ignore villainy when it's presented sympathetically maybe it needs to be. Dab Sweet's little arc was actually unexpected. That's why Leef had to die. Killing someone who didn't have potential to develop into a real and interesting character wouldn't have worked so well on the reader. Plus it fits into Abercrombie's whole 'things just happen' schtick. Gonna miss Cosca though. Easily the best villainous mercenary in literature.
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| # ¿ Nov 26, 2012 13:01 |
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