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4.01 AVERAGE
4.01 AVERAGE
adventurous
challenging
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
First read 10/2024
I picked this up because it was described by the author as "a piece of violent entertainment that's also a meditation on violent entertainment", which is about as perfect an advertisement as I've ever come across. Forget quotes by famous people on the cover—promise me a book that's Fun and Has Themes, and I'm sold. Stover also gets relentlessly mentioned on r/Fantasy whenever the conversation turns to best fights/action, which also got my hopes up. In the end, though, I'm lukewarm.
As a meditation on violent entertainment, it was—alright, I suppose? In a cyberpunky future, Actors get shifted into an alternative universe, Overworld, to have Adventures (there's a lot of capitalisation in this). Leisurefolk, just the wealthiest of several castes, pay to experience the Actors' experiences in sort-of virtual reality, while everyone else has to buy recordings. Naturally, the Actors die sometimes, which makes it even more exciting, and Overworld is periodically plunged into war because the Studio has told an Actor to kill someone important, for views. I enjoy science fiction most when it's really working to tease out the social issues it's tackling, and Heroes Die never went as far as I would have liked, but it was, well, just alright. I suppose if I hadn't read The Running Man, The Long Walk, and the Hunger Games so many years ago, I might have been more impressed, although this works better as an imperialism metaphor than they do. Also, the 'real world' plotline mostly revolves around deposing a single powerful man Hari has issues with, rather than addressing the wider system that enables the Studio to exist, but I suppose there are three more books in the series.
Stover made the interesting choice to dip into first person present tense for Caine's internal monologue (capital-S Soliloquy, it's called) whilst in Overworld (except for the bits where the signal gets blocked, for plot reasons), and third person past tense the rest of the time. Unfortunately, this meant that a lot of the action was narrated first person, and all the time spent in the 'real world' was in third person, just when it needed Hari/Caine's personality to take the most weight. I think action tends to work better in third person, and first person really helps to flesh out the narrator's character, so I suspect it might have worked better the other way around, only then Stover wouldn't have been able to make the point about the alternative universe being more visceral and immediate to Caine than his native world. Unfortunate. So as "a piece of violent entertainment", I didn't find it as entertaining as it might have been. Particularly towards the beginning, though, it did do a tremendous job of conveying Hari/Caine's constant anger, all clenched jaw and gritted teeth, which is nothing that hasn't been done before, but hey, it was fun. Stover is also very fond of the formulation "to chamber a [side] kick", which is wonderfully evocative; a little jarring in the fantasy setting but very appropriate for a narrator from a more technologically dominated world. I will undoubtedly be stealing it for TTRPGs, but all the same, it's overused here.
Overworld is very much a grimdark fantasy setting, but it mostly focuses on the more powerful people of the world, rather than exploring just how rough life gets for the little people. Makes sense given the Studio's interest in producing Adventures, but Stover could have worked around it to drive home the human cost of their business. I would have liked to have seen Ma'elKoth's origins fleshed out more (what a name), and as for Count Berne, well. There were possibly as many as three non-heterosexual characters in this, two of which are not particularly good people, and one of whom cannot appear on the page without either trying to rape someone, or fantasising about it. In fact, just a whole lot of homophobia and misogyny from the characters generally. Yes, it's meant to be a pretty rough setting, but this is a lazy way of conveying that.
I suppose I'll continue with the series, but I'm in no rush to do so—though I have heard promising things about the sequel.
I picked this up because it was described by the author as "a piece of violent entertainment that's also a meditation on violent entertainment", which is about as perfect an advertisement as I've ever come across. Forget quotes by famous people on the cover—promise me a book that's Fun and Has Themes, and I'm sold. Stover also gets relentlessly mentioned on r/Fantasy whenever the conversation turns to best fights/action, which also got my hopes up. In the end, though, I'm lukewarm.
As a meditation on violent entertainment, it was—alright, I suppose? In a cyberpunky future, Actors get shifted into an alternative universe, Overworld, to have Adventures (there's a lot of capitalisation in this). Leisurefolk, just the wealthiest of several castes, pay to experience the Actors' experiences in sort-of virtual reality, while everyone else has to buy recordings. Naturally, the Actors die sometimes, which makes it even more exciting, and Overworld is periodically plunged into war because the Studio has told an Actor to kill someone important, for views. I enjoy science fiction most when it's really working to tease out the social issues it's tackling, and Heroes Die never went as far as I would have liked, but it was, well, just alright. I suppose if I hadn't read The Running Man, The Long Walk, and the Hunger Games so many years ago, I might have been more impressed, although this works better as an imperialism metaphor than they do. Also, the 'real world' plotline mostly revolves around deposing a single powerful man Hari has issues with, rather than addressing the wider system that enables the Studio to exist, but I suppose there are three more books in the series.
Stover made the interesting choice to dip into first person present tense for Caine's internal monologue (capital-S Soliloquy, it's called) whilst in Overworld (except for the bits where the signal gets blocked, for plot reasons), and third person past tense the rest of the time. Unfortunately, this meant that a lot of the action was narrated first person, and all the time spent in the 'real world' was in third person, just when it needed Hari/Caine's personality to take the most weight. I think action tends to work better in third person, and first person really helps to flesh out the narrator's character, so I suspect it might have worked better the other way around, only then Stover wouldn't have been able to make the point about the alternative universe being more visceral and immediate to Caine than his native world. Unfortunate. So as "a piece of violent entertainment", I didn't find it as entertaining as it might have been. Particularly towards the beginning, though, it did do a tremendous job of conveying Hari/Caine's constant anger, all clenched jaw and gritted teeth, which is nothing that hasn't been done before, but hey, it was fun. Stover is also very fond of the formulation "to chamber a [side] kick", which is wonderfully evocative; a little jarring in the fantasy setting but very appropriate for a narrator from a more technologically dominated world. I will undoubtedly be stealing it for TTRPGs, but all the same, it's overused here.
Overworld is very much a grimdark fantasy setting, but it mostly focuses on the more powerful people of the world, rather than exploring just how rough life gets for the little people. Makes sense given the Studio's interest in producing Adventures, but Stover could have worked around it to drive home the human cost of their business. I would have liked to have seen Ma'elKoth's origins fleshed out more (what a name), and as for Count Berne, well. There were possibly as many as three non-heterosexual characters in this, two of which are not particularly good people, and one of whom cannot appear on the page without either trying to rape someone, or fantasising about it. In fact, just a whole lot of homophobia and misogyny from the characters generally. Yes, it's meant to be a pretty rough setting, but this is a lazy way of conveying that.
I suppose I'll continue with the series, but I'm in no rush to do so—though I have heard promising things about the sequel.
A review of the whole series:
1: Heroes Die is great. The dynamic between the two worlds is great, and all the forces on Caine play off each other in great ways, and Caine himself is a great protagonist. Gritty, bloody, and very funny. This is the best book in the series. The ending is very conclusive, and the book works great standalone.
2: Blade of Tyshalle is good. Shockingly introspective, but still a violent action filled book. The competing forces around Caine are just as good as in the first book, if not better. The black goo felt out of place, and didn't sit well with me as a plot device. Not as good as the first book, but still enjoyable. The ending was so conclusive I wasn't sure how the series could continue.
3: Caine Black Knife is just okay. The flashback sections are great, but the main timeline is pretty weak. Caine doesn't have the tension around his actions that made the first two books so good, and the actual main story isn't super engaging. This book has to be read with book 4, as they are sort of two sides of the same story, with book 4 having the real ending.
4: Caine's Law is the weakest book in the series. While it was interesting trying to figure out how the scenes presented tied back into Caine Black Knife, they didn't make for an interesting story. There was no tension around Caine's actions, and even less of an actual goal. Lots of random scenes trying to justify the ending and talking about how neat horses are. The ending it does give you is not noticeably better than the one in Blade of Tyshalle. Caine is still a fun protagonist, and piecing everything together is neat, but the book isn't great.
I'd treat the first book as a standalone, and if you are interested in reading more and seeing a more fitting conclusion, read the first two as a duology. The last two should really just be read if you loved Caine as a protagonist and would read anything about him. I don't regret reading them, but I can't say I really recommend them.
1: Heroes Die is great. The dynamic between the two worlds is great, and all the forces on Caine play off each other in great ways, and Caine himself is a great protagonist. Gritty, bloody, and very funny. This is the best book in the series. The ending is very conclusive, and the book works great standalone.
2: Blade of Tyshalle is good. Shockingly introspective, but still a violent action filled book. The competing forces around Caine are just as good as in the first book, if not better. The black goo felt out of place, and didn't sit well with me as a plot device. Not as good as the first book, but still enjoyable. The ending was so conclusive I wasn't sure how the series could continue.
3: Caine Black Knife is just okay. The flashback sections are great, but the main timeline is pretty weak. Caine doesn't have the tension around his actions that made the first two books so good, and the actual main story isn't super engaging. This book has to be read with book 4, as they are sort of two sides of the same story, with book 4 having the real ending.
4: Caine's Law is the weakest book in the series. While it was interesting trying to figure out how the scenes presented tied back into Caine Black Knife, they didn't make for an interesting story. There was no tension around Caine's actions, and even less of an actual goal. Lots of random scenes trying to justify the ending and talking about how neat horses are. The ending it does give you is not noticeably better than the one in Blade of Tyshalle. Caine is still a fun protagonist, and piecing everything together is neat, but the book isn't great.
I'd treat the first book as a standalone, and if you are interested in reading more and seeing a more fitting conclusion, read the first two as a duology. The last two should really just be read if you loved Caine as a protagonist and would read anything about him. I don't regret reading them, but I can't say I really recommend them.
adventurous
dark
tense
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
I was recommended this years ago; without that recommendation I probably wouldn't have finished.
To its credit, I think the core story is written very well for a testosterone action fest. Strip away all that I don't like about it and the writing and action do a really good job drawing me in while being easy to breeze through. The characters all serve their purpose and mostly feel generally unique, although very obvious and tropey; forgivable when I remember this was written in the 90s. The pacing and plot builds up nicely to a satisfying climax, and we get nice wrapup near the end that cleans up loose threads well. It's aged acceptably; it pushes boundaries in ways I don't like, and some of the characterizations are definitely very 90s titillation, but I don't think it does anything so unacceptable that you can't push through even now.
That being said, I feel like this is exactly the kind of grimdark that I dislike; take away most of it and the story isn't affected. None of the terrible content warning acts that are flippantly thrown at you as setting or background noise, not the storage containers of limbs and blood and guts or any scenes involving gore of various sorts, none of the terrible torturous acts performed on each other, sliding bodies through giant statues with sexual organs, the sexual predator/murderous inner thoughts of certain pov characters; none of it was necessary or had any impact on the plot. As I read I was constantly asking "why? what does this add to the story or the characters?" I don't think there was a good answer even once, and this was the book's biggest flaw. Maybe things were different back when it was written, but now I don't feel like there's any excuse to have this level of gratuitous content just to have it.
I honestly didn't even hate the book or felt any strong emotions toward it at the end; I just finished it feeling puzzled by it. I don't think this is a book I could recommend to anyone, because every genre it represents has a better choice someplace else. There's grimdark with better characterization where the grimdark has meaning and relevance; there's testosterone action fest hero's journey stories that don't pad with shock and awe and have better side characters and action scenes; there's a very swamped field of isekai and transported-to-other-world stories, and plenty of dystopian future fiction to pick from. Look elsewhere
To its credit, I think the core story is written very well for a testosterone action fest. Strip away all that I don't like about it and the writing and action do a really good job drawing me in while being easy to breeze through. The characters all serve their purpose and mostly feel generally unique, although very obvious and tropey; forgivable when I remember this was written in the 90s. The pacing and plot builds up nicely to a satisfying climax, and we get nice wrapup near the end that cleans up loose threads well. It's aged acceptably; it pushes boundaries in ways I don't like, and some of the characterizations are definitely very 90s titillation, but I don't think it does anything so unacceptable that you can't push through even now.
That being said, I feel like this is exactly the kind of grimdark that I dislike; take away most of it and the story isn't affected. None of the terrible content warning acts that are flippantly thrown at you as setting or background noise, not the storage containers of limbs and blood and guts or any scenes involving gore of various sorts, none of the terrible torturous acts performed on each other, sliding bodies through giant statues with sexual organs, the sexual predator/murderous inner thoughts of certain pov characters; none of it was necessary or had any impact on the plot. As I read I was constantly asking "why? what does this add to the story or the characters?" I don't think there was a good answer even once, and this was the book's biggest flaw. Maybe things were different back when it was written, but now I don't feel like there's any excuse to have this level of gratuitous content just to have it.
I honestly didn't even hate the book or felt any strong emotions toward it at the end; I just finished it feeling puzzled by it. I don't think this is a book I could recommend to anyone, because every genre it represents has a better choice someplace else. There's grimdark with better characterization where the grimdark has meaning and relevance; there's testosterone action fest hero's journey stories that don't pad with shock and awe and have better side characters and action scenes; there's a very swamped field of isekai and transported-to-other-world stories, and plenty of dystopian future fiction to pick from. Look elsewhere
adventurous
dark
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This is how I believe this book was conceived.
Matthew Stover is probably one of the authors who has too many ideas to ever write in their lifetime, so what he did is he put all of the concepts he wanted to write a book about on slips of paper, and drew out 6 slips of paper randomly from a hat.
From this he got:
Portal fantast
dystopian society based on case systems
Movie star/celebrity main character
Most feared fighter in the world main character
Loe story
God emperor
Then he started writing a book and just included all of these, and it should have been terrible, but through some kind of black magic he managed to make the book with all of these like......Good
The way this book manages to juggle so many elements and make it feel that it is totally normal for all of these to fit together, and it is extremely impressive. It managed thematic coherence while juggling all that stuff at the same time. Also happens to have a pretty damn interesting main cast of characters, thrilling action, and an incredibly epic, and satisfying conclusion.
Oh, and the main character throws leg kicks at people, yay Muay Thai.
I have one major complaint though, that for me is a substantial point against the novel. There are a number of secondary antagonists in this story, and they get PoVs, and not an insignificant amount of them. All 3 of secondary antagonists were pretty rough to read, one of them especially. And by rough I mean both that they are terrible people, and also that they are pretty boring, flat, one note, uninteresting people, especially Berne.
Stover has an interview answer at the end of this book where he says he doesn't believe in evil, that it is a point of view, and nobody views themself as evil, and the interviewer is praising him for not just writing the protagonists as pure good, and the antagonists as pure evil. And he does do this for one antagonist, and the main characters
On the other hand he may have written the most irredeemably, unnuanced, pure evil character I have read. Berne manages to think about how excited he is to rape people in every single PoV he has(he probably has like 10 3-8 page PoV sections as a random guess), and often he does multiple times per PoV. There is nothing to respect about him, nothing to admire, no reason to sympathize, no common ground where I can see where he is coming from, he has not even the slightest, tiny twinge of complexity, humanity or depth. This ends up being a more significant con, because we don't spend an irrelevant amount of time in his point of view, he is probably the 4th most prominent character in this book.
Despite Bernes(and kinda 2 other minor antagonists who I have similar issues with narratively to a smaller degree) best efforts Heroes Die was awesome, incredibly interesting conceptually, thrilling and tense in execution, and with a satisfying conclusion. So despite a significant con, I still thought it was very good.
8/10
Matthew Stover is probably one of the authors who has too many ideas to ever write in their lifetime, so what he did is he put all of the concepts he wanted to write a book about on slips of paper, and drew out 6 slips of paper randomly from a hat.
From this he got:
Portal fantast
dystopian society based on case systems
Movie star/celebrity main character
Most feared fighter in the world main character
Loe story
God emperor
Then he started writing a book and just included all of these, and it should have been terrible, but through some kind of black magic he managed to make the book with all of these like......Good
The way this book manages to juggle so many elements and make it feel that it is totally normal for all of these to fit together, and it is extremely impressive. It managed thematic coherence while juggling all that stuff at the same time. Also happens to have a pretty damn interesting main cast of characters, thrilling action, and an incredibly epic, and satisfying conclusion.
Oh, and the main character throws leg kicks at people, yay Muay Thai.
I have one major complaint though, that for me is a substantial point against the novel. There are a number of secondary antagonists in this story, and they get PoVs, and not an insignificant amount of them. All 3 of secondary antagonists were pretty rough to read, one of them especially. And by rough I mean both that they are terrible people, and also that they are pretty boring, flat, one note, uninteresting people, especially Berne.
Stover has an interview answer at the end of this book where he says he doesn't believe in evil, that it is a point of view, and nobody views themself as evil, and the interviewer is praising him for not just writing the protagonists as pure good, and the antagonists as pure evil. And he does do this for one antagonist, and the main characters
On the other hand he may have written the most irredeemably, unnuanced, pure evil character I have read. Berne manages to think about how excited he is to rape people in every single PoV he has(he probably has like 10 3-8 page PoV sections as a random guess), and often he does multiple times per PoV. There is nothing to respect about him, nothing to admire, no reason to sympathize, no common ground where I can see where he is coming from, he has not even the slightest, tiny twinge of complexity, humanity or depth. This ends up being a more significant con, because we don't spend an irrelevant amount of time in his point of view, he is probably the 4th most prominent character in this book.
Despite Bernes(and kinda 2 other minor antagonists who I have similar issues with narratively to a smaller degree) best efforts Heroes Die was awesome, incredibly interesting conceptually, thrilling and tense in execution, and with a satisfying conclusion. So despite a significant con, I still thought it was very good.
8/10
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexism, Sexual violence
adventurous
dark
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
adventurous
dark
One of the most fun books I've read in years. Don't let the world's worst book cover put you off. This was excellent.
Rarely have I seen such a well-written mash-up of science-fiction and fantasy. This is the first book in a series where actors in the real world take the parts of heroes in a fantasy world, ostensibly for entertainment purposes but really for power of those that pull the strings. The author describes this book as "...a piece of violent entertainment that is a meditation on violent entertainment." This is not a fantasy novel where you find the proverbial pig farmer's son who happens to be the long lost prince that rises up to become the world's most powerful magician and saves the day. It's an interesting and original concept, filled with violence and profanity as well as thought-provoking takes on the nature of power and ethics and political machinations. I think it can be read on several different levels and no doubt, different readers will come away with different experiences.
This one's been on my TBR list for quite some time as representative of fantasy's "new bread" authors (although not so new anymore). Methinks with authors like Rothfuss, Abercrombie, Sanderson, Lynch, Stover, and many others, we fantasy readers will be in fine shape for years to come.
This one's been on my TBR list for quite some time as representative of fantasy's "new bread" authors (although not so new anymore). Methinks with authors like Rothfuss, Abercrombie, Sanderson, Lynch, Stover, and many others, we fantasy readers will be in fine shape for years to come.
adventurous
dark
funny
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes