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A review by toggle_fow
Half a King by Joe Abercrombie
adventurous
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
This was my first Abercrombie after years of avoiding him. And it was good as hell.
Half a King is a Ben Hur revenge story, but make it Vikings.
Our main character is Yarvi, a young prince of Gettland who has always been the black sheep of his family due to a crippled hand. He is more comfortable with study and thought than the physical deeds of prowess his culture demands, and intends to become a Minister (something like a priest/scholar). All these plans are torn from him when his father and brother are killed, and suddenly he finds himself as the new King of Gettland.
However, Yarvi is betrayed almost immediately. After barely surviving an attempt on his life, Yarvi is captured and sold into slavery. What follows is his fight for survival, and for vengeance on the people who killed his father and betrayed him.
Overall, the story is pretty harsh. Terrible circumstances, violence, the depredations of slavery, gray-moral characters that can do both good or bad things at the flip of a coin. However, I found it gripping and still very enjoyable. Yarvi is sniveling and self-pitying at the beginning and clearly has no particular ambition to be a good person at the end, but I rooted for him the whole time and liked his band of friends. I liked the surprise reveal at the end a LOT, although I'm not sure how it's going to turn out for Gettland in the long run.
I had avoided Abercrombie until now because I am not a grimdark person and had heard so much about his worlds where there's no such thing as right and wrong and every character is a bad person. Thus, I was a bit surprised that, to me, this seems to fall well within the standard deviation of regular fantasy genre tone. This series is considered YA, so I wonder if this is more tame than Abercrombie's adult fantasy books. I'm interested to find out.
Half a King is a Ben Hur revenge story, but make it Vikings.
Our main character is Yarvi, a young prince of Gettland who has always been the black sheep of his family due to a crippled hand. He is more comfortable with study and thought than the physical deeds of prowess his culture demands, and intends to become a Minister (something like a priest/scholar). All these plans are torn from him when his father and brother are killed, and suddenly he finds himself as the new King of Gettland.
However, Yarvi is betrayed almost immediately. After barely surviving an attempt on his life, Yarvi is captured and sold into slavery. What follows is his fight for survival, and for vengeance on the people who killed his father and betrayed him.
Overall, the story is pretty harsh. Terrible circumstances, violence, the depredations of slavery, gray-moral characters that can do both good or bad things at the flip of a coin. However, I found it gripping and still very enjoyable. Yarvi is sniveling and self-pitying at the beginning and clearly has no particular ambition to be a good person at the end, but I rooted for him the whole time and liked his band of friends. I liked the surprise reveal at the end a LOT, although I'm not sure how it's going to turn out for Gettland in the long run.
I had avoided Abercrombie until now because I am not a grimdark person and had heard so much about his worlds where there's no such thing as right and wrong and every character is a bad person. Thus, I was a bit surprised that, to me, this seems to fall well within the standard deviation of regular fantasy genre tone. This series is considered YA, so I wonder if this is more tame than Abercrombie's adult fantasy books. I'm interested to find out.