Listened to the audiobook with Ben Elliot. Well narrated.

I loved Joe Abercrombie’s style of prose in the First Law-world. I think that the First Law-trilogy itself was good, but not amazing. The individual characters were great – Logen Ninefingers and Inquisitor Glokta are memorable and gruesome and creepily easy to empathise with. But the overarching story took a long while to get going and was perhaps just a little vanilla. Abercrombie first really hooked me with the three ‘standalone’ novels in the First Law-world that came after the trilogy, that focussed more on some of those great characters.

So when I picked up Half a King, I was very curious where the Shattered Sea-trilogy fit on the spectrum.

The first thing to note is that the books are significantly shorter than the First Law-books, and it shows in the pacing. The adventure starts pretty swiftly and keeps moving at high speed until the book’s conclusion.

Because of the amount of story crammed into the relatively short novel (for a fantasy book) due to the high pace, there is not as much attention to worldbuilding or even to character as I might have liked. I liked the grounded, low fantasy setting (with some …potential post apocalyptic vibes?), but it remains in the background throughout.

The result is that Half a King was an enjoyable enough read, but also lacked the depth to really get me invested. I also found that the prose was missing some of the dry humour and flourishes that made me appreciate it so much in the other Abercrombie works I have read.

It is notable that the book sticks very close to the classic Hero’s Journey. It was not jarringly obvious, but more seasoned readers of fantasy might find the patterns a little predictable.

I have seen the Shattered Sea-books labelled Young Adult. I can see that they are more suited to younger Fantasy readers than Abercrombie’s other works. I get that they are significantly less grim and a simpler in story than the First Law-books.

However, Half a King is by no means the romcom with a fantasy veneer that YA Fantasy has a reputation for. It is a simple, broadly enjoyable fantasy story with just enough going on to help me race to the end in a handful of days.

I will continue with the trilogy and report back to you – perhaps some of that mysterious post-apocalyptic-looking stuff will play up in the next books, and it will turn out that the story doesn’t just take place in the pseudo-Baltic but the actual Baltic in some distant future. We will see!