The Blade Itself

I had heard great things about Joe Abercrombie. His books are on all the lists of fantasy books to read and many people rate this book as awesome.

I do not. I try to finish most books,  but is just couldn't bring myself to do so. I got to my 50 page rule and have no interest in it.

A crippled torturer, a "barbarian," to cool for you jock/captain of something along with some kind of wizard get together eventually and do something. I don't even know what,  but bad guys from the north have something to do with it. I don't even know.

The characters are supposed to be cool, but they are really just either creepy or cocky. The torture has an obviously gross and gory line of work and although he says he's trying to find meaning in the brutality, he keeps doing it and finds pleasure in it. The captain reminds me of a stereotypical football jock who is on the team to get the cheerleaders to look at him and to get drunk at the next kegger held. His friends were pretty cool and could have had a more interesting story than jock boy. The barbarian man,  though I don't know his age (supposedly has a family that was murdered,  but he very much acts and talks younger than an adult so I don't know for sure), brutal decapitates a kid. He boy was part of a bandit group,  I get it,  but ick. Abercrombie didn't have to make him a boy or be as gross with it as he was. At this point I just stopped. Too gross for me.

It is just the beginning of the book so the characters haven't had their trials to smooth out their character yet. I get that. It's the character arc. Obviously they grow somehow but I just don't care. They aren't engaging enough for me to want to see them grow.

The jock had a run through the city and that was pretty cool for about the two seconds of setting we got,  but aside from "mountains," "cliff," "water," maybe "bog," and "torture room" there wasn't much setting even though the descriptions were long. There was white gloves and plaster which made me put it in a more modern sterile setting, but then everywhere else felt fantasy-ish. My mind couldn't decide where to put people or the intended setting around them.

Between the constant profanity (F-bombs included) and the gore/creepy factor,  I'm relieved to put this book down.

Heir of Fire

The third book in the "Throne of Glass" series by Sarah J. Maas, just didn't do it for me. I got to page 248 when I couldn't take it anymore and stopped. I may pick it up later, or I might just find a wiki on it to find out what happened, but I just can't get myself to finish it. I don't not finish books very often, especially after starting this here blog, but I just couldn't.

After Choal sends Celaena away across the sea to another country for her own safety, she finds she doesn't want to kill the mark she was sent to get rid of him. So she meanders around town until a Fae, the strong, silent type (who is also immortal) who could be described as a Juggernaut, finds her and she willingly goes with him (for no real reason except he is Fae...) to one of the cities of the Fae where she meets her great+ aunt who is queen of the Fae. But before her aunt will answer any of her questions that she has about how to defeat the king she serves so then he doesn't annihilate the world and all who are in it, she has to prove herself magically. Now that she is away from the country and the king who is stopping magic, she can access her uber powerful magic that she has been scared of/doesn't have access too since she was eight (someone cliche in my opinion). The Juggernaut Fae is the one set on babysitting duty to help her find a way to control her magic. But then as she is starting to gain access and minor control over it, there are baddies in the woods she she starts investigating--because she can't get any answers about the world wide problems that are erupting back at home.

Meanwhile, back in the castle, the Prince is starting to fall for a medic who has been twitterpated over him for years (he is the Prince after all). She also finds out about his new magic that made themselves  known in the second book. She okay with it and is willing to keep his secret, so much so that she is willing to help him find away to control or stop it. I foresee this going badly and probably hurting him. Also, there is a new man in town. Someone from Celaena's hometown, before it was destroyed, who is known for being a traitor to his country. He even holds Celaena's uncle's sword, which she was supposed to inherit. No one likes him but the king because he's a traitor-pants. But the also has something going on. Going out to party at night but only staying at his parties for a but before sneaking off. Choal finds this out and is super suspicious and follows. Suddenly, everything is thrown in the air and isn't what it seems.

Then way up north we get an introduction into Baba Yellowlegs (from book two) colony of witches (like they eat people and all they want to do is kill, not nice people at all). The King has something up his sleeve and has given the clans of witches packs of wyverns. They start training how to fly so they can go off to battle for the king.

This book jumps around a lot. There are so many points of view, which are distinct enough that it is easy to tell apart so it didn't get confusing, but it just jumped through so many and I didn't care like I had previously. It seemed to take too long to get anywhere. While Celaena is trying to learn how to use her magic, we get nothing more than Rowan yelling at her to "shift" and being boring for hours on end. They get into some dialog but even halfway through the book we know nothing about him except he will follow all of Celaena's aunt's orders until he immortally dies of old age. I don't care about him. He will be a love interest, but... eh. Whatever.

I didn't like Manon (the witch lady) for a long time. The death, death, death, and more death got old waaaay fast. How she got her wyvern was pretty cool, but then it went back to death, blood, smelling humans and wanting to kills them again. Ugh. But then that's what all of these books is about. I mean, Celaena is an assassin, of course it's going to be about death. But with Manon there is nothing but killing. Death ends up trickling into the other characters stories as well and it just gets so over done. Like a cloud of gloom hangs over the book. I'm so not up for gloomy or the foreseeable romances.

I think the characters we also not much like themselves, mainly Celaena. In the first two books she was witty, a book lover, it was fun to read. And I get that after the death of her friend she would change, but her wit is what I liked most about her. Now it seems to have pretty  much vanished unless she's getting beat up by Rowan. Those conversations don't last long and they aren't as funny.

OH, I also am very put off by her lack of description. People are blurry, if they were described it was probably only once and what seemed half heartedly. There is very little repetition of description to remind the reader what the freaking people look like. This drives me nuts!

It also swore a lot, which I don't care for in the least bit. It became very annoying. (Call me a prude, whatever.)

It felt rushed to me but weirdly enough it took forever to get anywhere. 560-ish pages of not a lot happening. Almost like a hurry up and wait game we play in bureaucracies. It got boring and I have a very large pile of other books that are due back at the library soon that I want to get to. So I'm putting it down.

Also, it was funny, when I was trying to explain it to my husband, he got all confused--possibly due bad descriptions on my part. But there was so much going on with so many characters and popping in and out and just odd things happening. It was a very long conversation, where, at the end, he asked me, "why are you still reading this then?" And I didn't have a good answer to give him.

I know there are lots of other people who like it, but I just didn't.

Promise of Blood

Promise of Blood is a mix of the French Revolution and magic.

Field Marshal Tamas and his group of powerful Gun Powder Mages overthrow their king who was about to pretty much enslave their people to another nation because the debts were too high. Tamas successfully takes the city for the people and is rather successful at keeping it too. But then trouble comes calling not only from outside forces (the nation they were about to be sold off to, though not in so many words), but also from inside his own group counselors. Tamas is ambushed, kidnapped, severely injured, and almost dies often in this book as he's trying to find out who he can trust.

Adamat is a retired investigator who is hired by Tamas to find out information about a they dying words of cabals they were killing during this coup. Then to investigate who this traitor is among the ranks. But is he able to be trusted too?

Taniel, Tamas' son, is sent with his mute "savage" companion to track down the Privileged, a high powered sorceress, who decimated a portion of Tamas' troops. But there are more things gone one than just being a powerful Privileged. She seems more than just good.

Then also there is Malahi, this mysterious chef who appears out of nowhere, cooks the best food which also appears out of nowhere, and supposes himself a God.

This book actually took me a long time to read, comparatively. There were moments in the middle of a fight when I was willing to put it down and go get a sandwich, which is pretty sad. It seemed very slow going and it was hard to tell where our destinations were. There were few lamp posts in this fog and they seemed very far apart. You could chop the book up into two parts, I guess. Easily based on the "mystery" part that the investigator Adamat and what he finds out. But it felt weird because I didn't know where it was going.

It also got very bloody (hence the title) right off. Much like the French Revolution, there were mass executions of the nobility just so then they couldn't have claim to the throne. It dims down on the gore part as it goes on, so if you don't care for messy scenes and you can muscle through it, it'll get better. Though the fight scenes happen very often. As I said, Tamas gets kidnapped, ambushed, sliced and diced, and gets broken a lot. Though he doesn't heal instantly, so I'll give him that reality. But that was just Tamas, not everyone in this war.

This is not a romantic fantasy story in any real sense of the word. There are five girls who are named and alive in the whole book that aren't background characters. One is just a background character for this book who gets a few lines said mainly to Tamas even though she is Taniel's ex-fiance. Two are seen as crazy and trying to kill everyone. Another is a laundress who gets the most wordage on the page, but there still isn't much of it comparatively to the other characters. And the last is a mute, who is supposed to be mysterious and funny, which I guess she is, but there are other ways to make a girl mysterious without cutting out her tongue.

There is a lot of jumping in this book from different peoples point of view. Which I don't mind, but it had the tendency of shifting the time line a little, I think. It was a very character based book with their decisions making the story go forward. Which is okay, I personally would have wanted more plot points to help me guess where it was going.

It seemed seems the book was based around fighting and food. Lol.

I think it was well written and the mix  of gunpowder and magic is new. The religion that was created was intriguing and I would like to see how that develops more. The world setting and cultures of the people were well developed.

I will probably read the next ones in this trilogy because the characters that were developed were intriguing enough and the world was fantastic. I do hope that the girls do get some more voice and that the mute finds someway to speak through her sorcery powers.