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A review by otherwyrld
The Grim Company by Luke Scull
3.0
This was an exhilarating, enthralling and above all entertaining book, and I read it pretty much in one go. So why did I only give it three stars?
The problem started early on, when I started comparing it to the go-to book for all modern fantasy, Game of Thrones. It was as I started reading through the book that I started noticing more and more similarities, not so much in the plot but in the characters. Once I did that it became a bit too obvious - how else am I to explain the surly warrior with a badly burnt face and with a canine sounding nickname, or the female queen of a foreign land with long platinum blonde hair and purple eyes. In fact it got so bad that I started imagining one character speaking with Peter Dinklage's voice - after all, what else would a half-mage sound like (admittedly he was half a man because he had had his legs cut off).
And then there were the names - Brienna, Sasha, Yllandris, Bran, Tyro (OK that's one's a bit of a stretch because its a dog, but still), once you see one you keep seeing more. They sound just a little bit too much like GOT character names, even when they don't play the same roles. I may be overstating this a little bit, but each time it happened it pulled me out of the story a bit, and it's a pity the editor of this book didn't get the author to change the details just a little bit more.
All this is a real shame, because I really enjoyed the book itself. As I said, it was a thrilling non-stop story. I liked the idea of the background, where a group of wizards grouping together to kill the gods, only to effectively find themselves replacing them. The gods bodies, having fell to earth from heaven, are now the only source of magic, but it's a dangerous job to mine them, as the wild magic spawns all kinds of nasty mutated creatures. The world is dying, destroyed by the battle five centuries before this book is set, but people still have to live in this dying world.
The characters were mostly well drawn and interesting to read, though the so-called main character Davarus Cole suffered from being an idiot with an exaggerated sense of his own importance. I almost felt sorry for him at the end though, and he found out some hard truths about his past. Highland warriors Kayne and Jerek reminded me of Terry Pratchetts's Cohen the barbarian (though 30 years less decrepit), as they fought and complained about how they were too old for this shit. There's a lot of other good characters here, and again like GOT we get to hear the story from their point of view.
The end ties up well with a few revelations, and I am looking forward to reading the next part of this trilogy. 3 1/2 stars
The problem started early on, when I started comparing it to the go-to book for all modern fantasy, Game of Thrones. It was as I started reading through the book that I started noticing more and more similarities, not so much in the plot but in the characters. Once I did that it became a bit too obvious - how else am I to explain the surly warrior with a badly burnt face and with a canine sounding nickname, or the female queen of a foreign land with long platinum blonde hair and purple eyes. In fact it got so bad that I started imagining one character speaking with Peter Dinklage's voice - after all, what else would a half-mage sound like (admittedly he was half a man because he had had his legs cut off).
And then there were the names - Brienna, Sasha, Yllandris, Bran, Tyro (OK that's one's a bit of a stretch because its a dog, but still), once you see one you keep seeing more. They sound just a little bit too much like GOT character names, even when they don't play the same roles. I may be overstating this a little bit, but each time it happened it pulled me out of the story a bit, and it's a pity the editor of this book didn't get the author to change the details just a little bit more.
All this is a real shame, because I really enjoyed the book itself. As I said, it was a thrilling non-stop story. I liked the idea of the background, where a group of wizards grouping together to kill the gods, only to effectively find themselves replacing them. The gods bodies, having fell to earth from heaven, are now the only source of magic, but it's a dangerous job to mine them, as the wild magic spawns all kinds of nasty mutated creatures. The world is dying, destroyed by the battle five centuries before this book is set, but people still have to live in this dying world.
The characters were mostly well drawn and interesting to read, though the so-called main character Davarus Cole suffered from being an idiot with an exaggerated sense of his own importance. I almost felt sorry for him at the end though, and he found out some hard truths about his past. Highland warriors Kayne and Jerek reminded me of Terry Pratchetts's Cohen the barbarian (though 30 years less decrepit), as they fought and complained about how they were too old for this shit. There's a lot of other good characters here, and again like GOT we get to hear the story from their point of view.
The end ties up well with a few revelations, and I am looking forward to reading the next part of this trilogy. 3 1/2 stars