fantasy

As far as book go, it isn’t often that I have the forethought or the word on the street to get in on the ground floor of an author or series of novels. Joe Abercrombie is no exception.

I bought the first book in his The First Law trilogy after pre-ordering his new book Half A King. Once I start reading The Blade Itself my first thought was that I have should have read this years ago. Eight years later I’ve finished the first book and I want to read the second book right away. This is highly irregular for me.

I don’t know what it is but I can’t read the second book of a series immediately after reading the first. I get distracted, I get bored, I lose focus, my eyes start to trail off and by the end I can’t remember what really happened. I’m going to be clear: this is a not a slight of the quality of the novels but a flaw that I have. Just look at this list of second books I’ve tried to read immediately after the first and either didn’t enjoy it as much or since discovering this flaw about myself, stopped reading to pick up another time.

A Clash of King by George R.R. Martin
The Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss
Red Seas under Red Skies by Scott Lynch
The Well of Ascension by Brandon Sanderson
Kill the Dead by Richard Kadrey
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams

I can recall my experiences with all these books. You know when you read the words but don’t really take in what they’re saying? That happened to me with A Clash of Kings and The Restaurant at the End of the Universes? One, I missed hints to major plot points that would come in future books and the other I was too bored to enjoy Adam’s delightful sense of humor.

I think with The Wise Man’s Fear I got the furthest before putting it down, maybe a hundred pages? This was around the time that I was discovering this flaw about myself and I loved The Name of the Wind so much that I didn’t want the experience of the second book to suffer. With Kill the Dead, the second book in Kadrey’s Sandman Slim series I read the first page, could feel my restlessness settle in and immediately put it down.

Now, Red Seas under Red Skies I remember putting down for maybe a month or two before I had to pick it up again in order to keep up with a friend who was reading, a much faster read than I am. Same thing happened with The Well of Ascension the year before and my opinion of the Mistborn series as a whole suffered for it. That book was torture for me to read through, I found it slow, I found the main character Vin to be a whiny idiot who made the worst decisions and by the end I didn’t care about anything that was happening. I just wanted to finish and when I did I didn’t bother picking up the third book even though my friend had already gotten halfway through it. That was December of 2012 into January 2013 and only now have I even started the third Mistborn book, The Hero of Ages. Guess what? I actually am enjoying despite the sour taste the second book left in my mouth.

There are of course exceptions. If I read The Lord of the Rings I can read all three front to back with no qualms. Sometimes I’ll just read one only because I have read them so many times and want to read something new but the point is I can read all of them front to back without getting that restless feeling. Same thing happened with most of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series. It wasn’t until the fourth book that I got restless and even then I only read one book in between before reading book five, six and seven.

The point of all this is that I want to read Before They Are Hanged, the second The First Law book right now. I need to know what happens to the characters now rather than later. I want to know more about the world, about it’s past and what is going to happen next. If an author can get me to do that then the books must be damn good.

Throne of the Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmed.

Here’s a book recommended to me by Keri, a longtime fellow book buyer who also recommended to me three of my favorite modern day fantasy books that I just read this past week. I honestly didn’t know what to expect from Throne of the Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmed.

As someone whose main interest is medievalism and fantasy I’m so used to that being the background for worldbuilding in epic fantasy books. So when I read this I was surprised to find it based on Arab and Middle Eastern culture which now seems so obvious as a rich source for worldbuilding that I am surprised it isn’t done more. Maybe it has and I’ve just not yet discovered those books.

The worldbuilding is where this book shines. The magic system is diverse, from the brief glimpse we get of it requires both vocal and written incantations. The types of monsters called ghuls which are raised from different elements including sand, water and skin ghuls. What stands out the most is the main city of Dhamsawaat brought to life by block names, class of people, merchants, factions and of course the royal palace of the Khalif which contains the titled Throne of the Crescent Moon.

The main characters, Doctor Adoulla Makhslood, Raseed bas Raseed, Zamia, Dawoud and Litaz all get points of views which really brings them to life as we get the inner workings of their struggle switching without delaying the action. Each one has both an inner and outer struggle you get to know and understand while also developing the relationships between the characters by letting us know what they think of one another. I think of George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire with each point-of-view chapter having a cap off at the end of each chapter. What Ahmed does is switches point of view from one chapter to the next in the middle of action. Just as an example Adoulla could be fighting a ghul with Raseed and be cornered and outnumbered then immediately the next chapter we get Raseed’s point of view as he tries to save his mentor.

The themes that come out in the book that I thoroughly enjoyed because of the switching point of views is the dynamics of age and youth, piety and apathy, experience and naievity. Adoulla, Dawoud and Litaz are much older having had their adventures together for many years. Their reaction to society is less rigid, more open minded as they’ve seen much of the world. Adoulla is very much a cynical old man wishing to retire viewing the established ruling power as incompetent if not corrupt. Zamia and Raseed both have a very rigid view of the world with very little experience of other cultures and ideas. Raseed because of the religious order and Zamia because of her tribe follow a strict set of rules that has been taught to them without questioning if those rules may be wrong or right in a given situation.

Where the novel is weak is in it’s plot development. The middle section after the setup of the conflict takes so long to gather the allies, uncover the secrets of their enemy and develop the plan only for the climax to be over in a blink of an eye. It never gets slow, only because by the time you’ve read the middle section you’re enthralled by the characters. You want to know more about them even when the plot isn’t advancing. The other weak part is the villain himself who we learn almost nothing about except for his name. Then when we finally meet him he barely speaks and is defeated in the blink of an eye after one of the characters finds his inner strength to overcome his self-doubt caused by the villain’s magic. His second in command does all the dirty work and gets the most development through exposition.

Does that seem harsh? I’m not sure but I would still recommend this book despite the little bit of shortcomings. I’m looking forward to the second novel The Thousand and One and how he’ll bring his main cast of characters back together.