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A review by peterkeep
Half the World by Joe Abercrombie
5.0
A worthy successor in every way to his YA debut, Half a King. It's got every bit of the same Joe Abercrombie-isms that I'll buy into every time he writes them. I can gush for more of that, but at some point it's probably embarrassing how much I enjoy his combination of cynicism, grit, humor, and awkward self-criticism.
He did do something new and neat, though: in his second book of the trilogy, he switched up the characters. We're a few years removed from the events of the first book, and those characters are very much involved in the events of this book, but the two "main" characters, Thorn and Brand, are completely new. It's kind of cool to see things through new eyes. With short snappy books like this, it makes a lot of sense to switch up the POV characters, since we don't have the page-count to follow a long realistic character development. Instead of rushing things or forcing new perspective changes alongside one that could be a bit tired, he gets pretty daring and starts over.
It paid off really well! These characters are definitely nothing new for him - he's written a quiet warrior who is plagued by his morals butting up against his strength and expectations. He's written the female with a chip on her shoulder, and he's even written the slow awkward romance before. But it still works well here and he does it with some new twists and unique details.
He also does some exposition on his world, and it turns out to be pretty much what I expected going in. Once I heard that this wasn't going to be a part of his First Law world, I guessed that it would be.
Anyways, even with that being a bit underwhelming, I'm still really happy with the trilogy so far. It looks like there's a nice plot set up for the final volume, and I'm excited to see what Abercrombie does with the final book: new POV characters again, or a combination of the ones we've seen already? I need to get around buying the final book to finish it out sooner rather than later.
He did do something new and neat, though: in his second book of the trilogy, he switched up the characters. We're a few years removed from the events of the first book, and those characters are very much involved in the events of this book, but the two "main" characters, Thorn and Brand, are completely new. It's kind of cool to see things through new eyes. With short snappy books like this, it makes a lot of sense to switch up the POV characters, since we don't have the page-count to follow a long realistic character development. Instead of rushing things or forcing new perspective changes alongside one that could be a bit tired, he gets pretty daring and starts over.
It paid off really well! These characters are definitely nothing new for him - he's written a quiet warrior who is plagued by his morals butting up against his strength and expectations. He's written the female with a chip on her shoulder, and he's even written the slow awkward romance before. But it still works well here and he does it with some new twists and unique details.
He also does some exposition on his world, and it turns out to be pretty much what I expected going in. Once I heard that this wasn't going to be a part of his First Law world, I guessed that it would be
Spoiler
a post-apocalyptic world, where WE'RE the people who left all of the relics behind and shattered the world, etc.Anyways, even with that being a bit underwhelming, I'm still really happy with the trilogy so far. It looks like there's a nice plot set up for the final volume, and I'm excited to see what Abercrombie does with the final book: new POV characters again, or a combination of the ones we've seen already? I need to get around buying the final book to finish it out sooner rather than later.