Joe Abercrombie stole my heart with “The First Law” trilogy, which might be the best fantasy story I’ve ever read — dark, with great characters, perfectly written. And finished! (Yeah, it’s a big thing in the modern world!) Recently, I sort of got tired of the genre and was more inclined towards finding a sci-fi, horror or even non-fiction book to read but the magic of Abercrombie’s name and the generosity of amazon, that was selling “Half a King” for just $3, made the decision to pick up this book much easier.

Sooo… okay, it’s really, really well written and very cinematographic. I don’t have a livid imagination and usually when I’m reading a book it’s just about flipping the damn pages and consuming the information about dragons and spaceships — there are no particular images in my mind. But it’s easy, even more me, to see what’s happening in the first book of “The Shattered Sea” series. The problem is that despite being fast-paced and catchy the Yarvi’s adventure is predictable and, fairly, quite ordinary. All what-a-twist moments are obvious and can be spotted from a mile off and all the character behave exactly like you’d expect them to. The characters themselves are bland at best, annoying at worst. Yarvi, yeah, I got that one of your hands is dysfunctional, would you please shut the fuck up stop mentioning it all the time?

At the end of the day, “Half a King” is not a bad book but unfortunately it didn’t live up to my expectations. Luckily though, the first novel of a new trilogy “The Age of Madness”, which is a direct continuation of “The First Law”, came out just recently, so, fingers crossed, it’ll be as smart and fierce as the books I liked =)