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I haven't read Best Served Cold yet but I really enjoyed the First Law Trilogy. Very fast paced, a lot of fun and a lot of the boring (to me) fantasy stuff trimmed back to a minimum. Despite the bleakness and death and all that they can be pretty funny as well in a slightly achronistic Black Adder kind of way. I just started Retribution Falls by Chris Wooding and thought it had a similar feel. Not far enough into it to give it a solid recommendation either way. It's similarly fast-paced, brutal without getting too bogged down in lore and world building and really doesn't feel like it's going to be super-happy-fun time for the obviously very flawed protagonists. It's more steampunk (guns and airships) than high fantasy. But in terms of tone it might be worth a shot for people who prefer this kind of fantasy to the density of something like the Malazan books. And while he's not as handsome  they share a similar taste in dust jacket photos
Gravy Jones fucked around with this message at 11:04 on Apr 19, 2010 |
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Apr 19, 2010 10:56
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Copernic posted:1. Monza identifies the next hit and the team sets up Sold. Just started this morning. And I regret mentioning Redemption Falls earlier in the thread. It was crap. Steer clear. Gravy Jones fucked around with this message at 11:52 on Apr 26, 2010 |
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Apr 26, 2010 11:42
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Just finished Best Served Cold. Had mixed feelings about it and didn't think it was in the same league as the First Law Trilogy, but I liked it well enough as a stand alone tale. I guess my biggest problem was with how similar a lot of it was to the FLT. Not just the general style and tone which is fine as that appears to be Abercrombie's thing, but a hell of a lot of the broader themes and the flow of the dynamic between the characters. I enjoyed the first half a lot more than the second and had some issues in the final act. I think what worked well in the FTL didn't work as well here. I might go into more spoilerific specifics at a later date. It was still a fun book. But I guess the thing about TFL was that it felt kind of new and somewhat subversive and this doesn't so much because it's more of the same.
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May 5, 2010 13:05
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A Nice Boy posted:I'm a sucker for deep, layered worldbuilding, and that's my only gripe with this series so far. The world is barely described in a lot of cases, so it feels like a bunch of disconnected personalities floating around in a world I can't really imagine other than fairly loose descriptions like "Argiont: castle." Does this get a bit better as the series goes on? It's very light on the world building. For me that was actually a refreshing change (given that the last fanatasy books I read where the Malazan books, not nescessarily a bad thing, but nice to have some respite). However, there is some and there is also more going on behind the scenes in terms of a big picture meta-narrative of kinds. This is more apparent when you read both the trilogy and the standlone (Best Served Cold) that follows. You only really get glimpses behind the curtain as it where, but it's done pretty well. It feels like the world has been built, but we only get to see the bits of it that the main characters see. as such most exposition beyond the here and now tends to be what is related to them by others. This adds a further level of obfuscation, that plays a part in the plot, as who the hell knows whether or not those relating it are reliable? Gravy Jones fucked around with this message at 14:51 on May 12, 2010 |
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May 12, 2010 14:49
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