Fiction/comics
Joe Abercrombie, Half a King: In a Nordic-fantasy-type, seafaring kingdom, the king and the heir die, leaving the youngest son to inherit the throne. But Yarvi was born with a hand with only two fingers on it, and most of those around him treat him as tainted and unable to be a man. He was going to enter the priesthood; thrust into kingship, he’s quickly betrayed and enslaved. The story moved quickly, and the revenge fantasy was tempered with some realism about the collateral damage of revenge and its unending cycle.
Daniel Abraham, The Tyrant’s Law: Third book in his The Dagger & the Coin series. About 25% of the way through, I got that sinking feeling you get when you realize that you are not reading a trilogy but rather a larger series. That said, I really like this series, which features a young banker finding her own moral core, a hardened mercenary willing to die to fight the rising spider goddess, an apostate of said goddess who can use her power to convince almost anyone of almost anything, and an insecure young man who somehow finds himself regent of a powerful kingdom as part of the rise of said goddess. The last one, Geder, is both competely understandable as a human being and also horrifying; the banker, Cithrin, provides a great contrast as someone whose own understandable weaknesses push her in a different direction-helping people instead of slaughtering them.
James Asmus, Jim Festante & Rem Broo, The End Times of Bram and Ben: Comic book about the Rapture, during which a clerical error takes the wrong Bram Carlson to Heaven, which (like SPN’s Heaven) is actually terrible. When he’s returned, Bram starts preaching to the remaining people about how they shouldn’t want to go, and campaigning to be the Antichrist. His more God-fearing friend Ben tries to rein him in, with various levels of disaster resulting. Bro-tastic (Ben accidentally roofies his love interest, and this makes her more interested in him); I don’t mind blasphemy, but this went too far into the crude for me.
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Daniel Abraham, The Tyrant’s Law: Third book in his The Dagger & the Coin series. About 25% of the way through, I got that sinking feeling you get when you realize that you are not reading a trilogy but rather a larger series. That said, I really like this series, which features a young banker finding her own moral core, a hardened mercenary willing to die to fight the rising spider goddess, an apostate of said goddess who can use her power to convince almost anyone of almost anything, and an insecure young man who somehow finds himself regent of a powerful kingdom as part of the rise of said goddess. The last one, Geder, is both competely understandable as a human being and also horrifying; the banker, Cithrin, provides a great contrast as someone whose own understandable weaknesses push her in a different direction-helping people instead of slaughtering them.
James Asmus, Jim Festante & Rem Broo, The End Times of Bram and Ben: Comic book about the Rapture, during which a clerical error takes the wrong Bram Carlson to Heaven, which (like SPN’s Heaven) is actually terrible. When he’s returned, Bram starts preaching to the remaining people about how they shouldn’t want to go, and campaigning to be the Antichrist. His more God-fearing friend Ben tries to rein him in, with various levels of disaster resulting. Bro-tastic (Ben accidentally roofies his love interest, and this makes her more interested in him); I don’t mind blasphemy, but this went too far into the crude for me.
comments on DW | reply there. I have invites or you can use OpenID.