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A review by highlanderajax
The Grim Company by Luke Scull
adventurous
emotional
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
Solidly fine, unspectacular. The plot is a fairly standard paint-by-numbers fantasy one, which is fine - there's no reason to mess with something that works. The characters are generally fairly well-written, the action is better than expected, and the world is well-constructed.
However, the book can't really seem to decide what it wants to be. Does it want to be a fantasy world with blood and gore, does it want to poke fun at aspects of those stories, does it want to play things tongue-in-cheek or straight? It's an awkward mix at times, and it leaves the overall tone feeling a little bit jumbled. It occasionally comes across as a slightly watered-down First Law series. There's explosions of that type of bloody, upsetting violence here and there, but then the tone will slide back a bit, only for another scene 20 pages later to revert to the same thing. It's not bad, but it's uneven, and it changes the feeling of the book significantly.
This is a decent enough book. Nice pacing, it's a quick read, and it's fairly entertaining. I probably wouldn't recommend it that much - I feel that most of what it does can be done better by other novels - but it's not bad, and there are interesting enough threads left that I could see myself, at some point, potentially picking up a sequel - if I was looking for another short, not too tough read.
However, the book can't really seem to decide what it wants to be. Does it want to be a fantasy world with blood and gore, does it want to poke fun at aspects of those stories, does it want to play things tongue-in-cheek or straight? It's an awkward mix at times, and it leaves the overall tone feeling a little bit jumbled. It occasionally comes across as a slightly watered-down First Law series. There's explosions of that type of bloody, upsetting violence here and there, but then the tone will slide back a bit, only for another scene 20 pages later to revert to the same thing. It's not bad, but it's uneven, and it changes the feeling of the book significantly.
This is a decent enough book. Nice pacing, it's a quick read, and it's fairly entertaining. I probably wouldn't recommend it that much - I feel that most of what it does can be done better by other novels - but it's not bad, and there are interesting enough threads left that I could see myself, at some point, potentially picking up a sequel - if I was looking for another short, not too tough read.