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A review by ianbanks
Grunts by Mary Gentle
adventurous
challenging
dark
funny
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
This one is a wild ride. Ms Gentle is a ridiculously competent storyteller and has written at least one of my all-time favourite books and this promised to be an absolute corker: a vast fantasy novel told from the perspective of the usually nameless orc infantry found in many a deathless trilogy.
The good first: there are a lot of digs at contemporary fantasy, but mostly some playful swipes at Professor Tolkien’s famous epic. There’s more than a few moments that you will recognise from other books or stories and a few cliches that get a good going-over as well. When it works, it’s wonderful fun, filled with vivid and superbly amoral or evil characters.
The bad is that it’s tremendously undisciplined. It reads like a collection of short stories, with developments added seemingly at a whim to expand the thin plot to something more substantial.
It’s also ridiculously, comically violent. It’s the sort of violence that, for me, works when more sparingly applied, but it still elicits an uneasy chuckle. It’s a lot of fun but it does require a lot of suspended disbelief on the part of the reader.
The good first: there are a lot of digs at contemporary fantasy, but mostly some playful swipes at Professor Tolkien’s famous epic. There’s more than a few moments that you will recognise from other books or stories and a few cliches that get a good going-over as well. When it works, it’s wonderful fun, filled with vivid and superbly amoral or evil characters.
The bad is that it’s tremendously undisciplined. It reads like a collection of short stories, with developments added seemingly at a whim to expand the thin plot to something more substantial.
It’s also ridiculously, comically violent. It’s the sort of violence that, for me, works when more sparingly applied, but it still elicits an uneasy chuckle. It’s a lot of fun but it does require a lot of suspended disbelief on the part of the reader.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Bullying, Child death, Emotional abuse, Gore, Gun violence, Physical abuse, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Torture, Violence, Blood, Mass/school shootings, Murder, War, and Injury/Injury detail