Now that I've finally calmed down enough to write this...

I have to admit that while I enjoyed Half a King, I couldn't help but feel that Joe Abercrombie's foray into the young adult fantasy genre was weaker than his other books. It was less funny, less emotionally compelling and, aside from Yarvi, had fewer nuanced characters than I expected. In short, it was a little disappointing. The sequel outshines it in every way possible and it is by far my favorite of his books. It's honestly the best book I've read this year.

The young adult fantasy genre has been waiting for a book like this. Hell, young adult in general has. There have been YA fantasy books that I loved and that hit me so hard I cried ([b:Finnikin of the Rock|4932435|Finnikin of the Rock (Lumatere Chronicles, #1)|Melina Marchetta|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1346007613s/4932435.jpg|4998084]) but I've never felt so damn proud of a book in my life. A lifelong obsession with dragons naturally led me into reading fantasy at a young age. The trouble with this as a tween/teen girl is that so few of the stories that I read had women doing things instead of just waiting at home for the warriors to return. If there was a kickass heroine, she fit one mold and one mold only: a girl who pretends to be a boy in order to be a warrior. And there was often a single mold for male warriors as well: brave to the point of stupidity, unafraid of death, handsome as hell (of course) and always gloriously victorious in battle. The thing that I love best about Joe Abercrombie is that he always takes genre tropes and expectations and destroys them.



He does such a fantastic job with all your expectations in this one that it made me want to cheer out loud.

"Sometimes a girl is touched by Mother War, and put among the boys in the training square, and taught to fight. Among the smaller children there are always a few, but with each year that passes they turn to more suitable things, then are turned to them, then shouted and bullied and beaten to them, until the shameful weeds are rooted out and only the glorious flower of manhood remains."



Thorn is a girl who has been touched by Mother War and is sure as hell not gonna let anyone stop her from what she's been born to do. What makes her gloriously different is that she's far from perfect. She's not some gorgeous paragon who also happens to be a badass fighter. She's stubborn to the point of ridiculousness, she's as prickly as her name, has a hell of a temper and no patience for anyone who gets in her way. But, she's easy to empathize with. She's fought her whole life just to be a warrior of Gettland and been told no at every turn. Since she's the most stubborn girl alive, she refuses to accept this and when things get rocky, she is saved by probably the least likely man: Gettland's minister, Father Yarvi (who we got to know in Half a King).



Father Yarvi knows that Mother War is about to envelope the entire Shattered Sea and wants a crew to gather allies for Gettland against the tyrannical high king and his minister, Mother Wexen. Since the mission is long and dangerous and rather short on glory, he ends up with a rather ragtag crew. If you've read Half a King, you'll recognize a few of them (particularly Rulf) but there's also many new faces.

"The master-at-arms' frown was murderous, but Brand didn't care. He felt as if a load was lifted. As if he'd had the South Wind's weight across his shoulders again, and suddenly let go. He felt, for the first time since he left Thorlby, as if he was standing in the light."

One of whom is the male lead character, Brand. As much as I absolutely loved Thorn, Brand was equally wonderful. He's Abercrombie's own little subversion of your traditional hero and the perfect foil to Thorn. He's a young man who's always tries to "live in the light" like his mother told him before he died. Unlike in standard fantasies, this is no easy thing. Gettland culture is very Viking-esque and prizes glory, courage in battle and dominating weaker people. Brand has a different brand of courage and I love Abercrombie for showing it. He's not deep-cunning like Yarvi, he's not fearless like Thorn and he's not experienced like Rulf. He's just a guy trying his best to do the right thing in an unfair world with less traditional "bravery" than his society expects. He's had a rough go of life and he's no more perfect than any Abercrombie character. That moment where he stands up to Hunnan was just fucking amazing. So damned refreshing to see honesty and speaking your mind to power being shown as equally courageous as fighting battles.



Most of all, this is one of the first fantasy books that has so much "girl power" that I actually started cheering out loud when I was reading it. You don't just have Thorn, the badass female warrior fighting for respect from the men. There's Queen Laithlin, Yarvi's mother, who is the strong-willed, capable female ruler who balances her more martial husband and works within the system to get power and respect. When Uthil "gets sick," you get to see just how much Laithlin is the power behind the throne and how she hides that to fool the male-dominated society in which she lives. And then there's Rin, Brand's sister. She starts out as a dependent of Brand's and since their parents are dead, he's determined to provide for her. I wasn't actively annoyed by this but the moment where she comes into her own and proves that she's no helpless victim made me feel so damn proud and happy. I adore that Abercrombie totally breaks the fantasy mold for characters, both main and secondary, throughout the book.

If you're looking at this book as a standard Abercrombie book and you're not a fan of romance, you'll probably be annoyed at the one that develops between Thorn and Brand. As a YA book however, this was one of the best romances I've seen since the Lumatere Chronicles. No insta-love, no fucking love triangle, it was glorious! As with Half a King, this book isn't as cynical or full of gallows humor as most of Abercrombie's adult books. But as a young adult fantasy, only Melina Marchetta comes even close to being as good. And honestly I think I like this one better. I know everyone won't agree, but I love this book for how perfectly it subverts all the traditional fantasy tropes and with flawed characters that you can't help but fall in love with. ALL THE STARS and I really can't recommend it highly enough!

Side Note: I hated the audiobook version of this. I mean, maybe I'm spoiled after the incredible voices that Steven Pacey does for the other Abercrombie books but the narrator for this one is just painful. He has this high-pitched British accent that feels wrong for a tense and gritty Abercrombie story. And then to make matters worse, all the characters except Thorn sound exactly like him. If you don't want to do different voices, I can get that. But to make Thorn's voice deeper than everyone else's? How the fuck does that make any sense at all? Just because she's fighting like the men doesn't mean she should sound the most manly. I admittedly pictured Lagertha everytime I read one of her passages but having her voice be so deep was just...weird.

I absolutely love how gnarly, gritty and scar covered Thorn was described in this book. To see a girl be described as ugly and gross and nasty looking is such a breath of fresh air in the world of YA were every girl who goes into battle or trains hard is still this graciously beautiful creature that has no scars or deformities from being in war. Abercrombie brings it to life that girls can be described just as gross as your battle hardened man and I love this.

The story was once again very fast moving, you are immediately thrown back into this world and it’s made obvious real quick that while Yarvi has returned, he isn’t the main focus of the story, that goes to our resident gnarly girl her self Thorn, but that’s not to say Yarvi doesn’t have an important role in this book because goodness knows this man is one conniving s.o.b and I am here for it! I love Yarvi.

You get both new and old characters, war and deals in the dark, lying, and backstabbing, I mean everything you could ask for it’s in this book and it’s done so well, EVEN THE ROMANCE, what romance?!?! Yes there is Romance and you know what, it was handled in such a realistic manner, it wasn’t any of that insta-romance shit YA is so obnoxious for. We watch two characters slowly grow towards having feelings towards each other and trying to determine in themselves what the heck these feelings are. And then when the romance finally does happen we get the after part where both characters are just like “what, what happens now?” And how they argue and fight and disagree and still don’t fully understand what they got themselves into, and how they are still trying to just understand themselves in this larger picture with someone else. It’s so realistic!!

The only thing that really threw me off while reading this, was at one point I felt the story was ending but I still had a whole 100 pages left and in my experience with YA doing this, it’s usually a really bad attempt at trying to get more pages into the book so I was very concerned about what could be added but thankfully I wasn’t let down. Let’s just say Yarvi is an intelligent conniving s.o.b and it really shows at the end of this book. Once again I’m left with the curiosity of what the next book will bring.


Also Brand, ah my heart, I love that sweet boy!

DNF/started and don’t want to keep reading.

I had issues with the first book in the series, with the most egregious being Abercrombie’s constant use of disablist language for no real reason. I finished the last book because I was engaged enough with the prose otherwise, and was curious to know if the character was going anywhere. They did not, and I realised that the author just wanted to make a character he could berate in a tiresome manner.

So I started the second book, this book, with more hope, as there are two new POV characters. So I assumed that the awful language would stop as, well, we’re not in this guy’s head anymore. But only a few chapters into the book and the disablism returns, as the protag of the previous is still a major character, and Abercrombie can’t think of any other physical or character descriptions than his crooked hand. Unnecessary, tiresome, and frankly, pretty lazy.

I got about 10% of the way through, so I maybe should read a little more before I put it down, but I just can’t be bothered really.

Able-bodied authors, please do better. And by that I mean, try some other words and think about what you write?