![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Book log 2018 #14 - Red Country
Jun. 23rd, 2018 08:48 pmRED COUNTRY by Joe Abercrombie
A somewhat Western-styled fantasy standalone set in the First Law world, with a few characters from that series making appearances. Despite being in the fantasy genre there isn't any magic or suchlike in this one (there was in the First Law trilogy, of course), but it still makes itself a believable world. The plot is both simple and rambling, and filled with interesting, memorable, and generally thoroughly unlikable characters, who are an oddly pleasing mix of stereotypes with depth. There are wise lines, funny lines, and a tendency for the narration to dip into a pseudo-Western sort of verbiage, which mostly works (except that “arse” doesn't, cos it seems too British to me). It's good and epic and filled with wit and character and action, and it works perfectly well as a standalone, so it doesn't matter whether the reader has read the First Law trilogy or not. The downside to this one is a tendency, in the last quarter or so in particular, to labour the perfectly OK – if obvious – subtexts and meanings by having multiple characters state them to each other in dialogue as often as they think them in internal monologues... Still, good for fans of epic fantasy and Westerns.
A somewhat Western-styled fantasy standalone set in the First Law world, with a few characters from that series making appearances. Despite being in the fantasy genre there isn't any magic or suchlike in this one (there was in the First Law trilogy, of course), but it still makes itself a believable world. The plot is both simple and rambling, and filled with interesting, memorable, and generally thoroughly unlikable characters, who are an oddly pleasing mix of stereotypes with depth. There are wise lines, funny lines, and a tendency for the narration to dip into a pseudo-Western sort of verbiage, which mostly works (except that “arse” doesn't, cos it seems too British to me). It's good and epic and filled with wit and character and action, and it works perfectly well as a standalone, so it doesn't matter whether the reader has read the First Law trilogy or not. The downside to this one is a tendency, in the last quarter or so in particular, to labour the perfectly OK – if obvious – subtexts and meanings by having multiple characters state them to each other in dialogue as often as they think them in internal monologues... Still, good for fans of epic fantasy and Westerns.