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weirdfish_93 's review for:
A Little Hatred
by Joe Abercrombie
Nowhere near as good as the First Law trilogy or standalone books.
The story itself is not bad, but it feels very much like we've been here before. Another war in the North culminating in an epic duel? Very familiar territory. The industrial revolution and the resulting social upheaval definitely has a lot of potential, but unfortunately the entire rebellion subplot just wasn't interesting to me.
I have to say I found most of the main characters quite annoying. Rikke, Savine, and Leo are all fairly irritating for different reasons, with Savine's opening few chapters being some of the worst First Law content so far due to some extremely cringeworthy dialogue. Orso is the best new character because he's much more self-aware when it comes to his flaws. Most of the other characters introduced just aren't interesting; I can't remember anything about Vick at all, whilst Gunnar Broad is just a boring version of Logen.
The villains are pretty poor. Stour Nightfall is like some basement dwelling 4chan edge-lord, up until his final scene which is actually pretty great. Meanwhile, the rebel leader Judge is extremely one-dimensional and has some truly horrible dialogue.
I wouldn't call Joe woke exactly, but there's definitely some slightly bizarre 'social commentary' type content in here. For example, a scene in which the author goes out of his way to describe how much a certain character hates foreigners, and then immediately has that same character almost get gang raped. I mean WTF - really? There's also a clear element of 'girl power' running through the book in general. I remember one scene where the Dogman randomly congratulates another character on being such a successful female leader. Male characters are generally helped or outwitted by female characters at every opportunity, including the final battle/duel where Rikke saves the day at the last moment. Perhaps this was an attempt to make up for the overt machismo in the earlier books, but it feels pretty forced.
Two stars because Joe still writes quite well. I will continue the trilogy at some point and hopefully it improves.
The story itself is not bad, but it feels very much like we've been here before. Another war in the North culminating in an epic duel? Very familiar territory. The industrial revolution and the resulting social upheaval definitely has a lot of potential, but unfortunately the entire rebellion subplot just wasn't interesting to me.
I have to say I found most of the main characters quite annoying. Rikke, Savine, and Leo are all fairly irritating for different reasons, with Savine's opening few chapters being some of the worst First Law content so far due to some extremely cringeworthy dialogue. Orso is the best new character because he's much more self-aware when it comes to his flaws. Most of the other characters introduced just aren't interesting; I can't remember anything about Vick at all, whilst Gunnar Broad is just a boring version of Logen.
The villains are pretty poor. Stour Nightfall is like some basement dwelling 4chan edge-lord, up until his final scene which is actually pretty great. Meanwhile, the rebel leader Judge is extremely one-dimensional and has some truly horrible dialogue.
I wouldn't call Joe woke exactly, but there's definitely some slightly bizarre 'social commentary' type content in here. For example, a scene in which the author goes out of his way to describe how much a certain character hates foreigners, and then immediately has that same character almost get gang raped. I mean WTF - really? There's also a clear element of 'girl power' running through the book in general. I remember one scene where the Dogman randomly congratulates another character on being such a successful female leader. Male characters are generally helped or outwitted by female characters at every opportunity, including the final battle/duel where Rikke saves the day at the last moment. Perhaps this was an attempt to make up for the overt machismo in the earlier books, but it feels pretty forced.
Two stars because Joe still writes quite well. I will continue the trilogy at some point and hopefully it improves.