Half a King by Joe Abercrombie

[[deleted user]]

This is our discussion of the contemporary fantasy novel....



Half a King by Joe Abercrombie

The first book of The Shattered Sea series. (2014-)

[Hillary]

I found this an enjoyable read, and a pretty quick one. I did, however, feel like this was a coming-of-age story I'd read before. Partly, I think this is the "YA" factor. I read at least one reviewer who claims that nothing interesting ever happens on boats in a fantasy novel, but I thought the story started to heat up once Yarvi got shipboard ... and there were a couple of elements of the ending that felt pretty close to "full Abercrombie."

[Hillary]

I found this interview between Abercrombie and his Italian translator to be interesting: http://www.joeabercrombie.com/2015/01...

It touches on Abercrombie's take on writing YA vs. adult fantasy and includes some thoughts on the culture of the "Shattered Seas" world.

[Brendan]

I read this one back when it first came out. I thought it was alright as a novel for adults, though I have no basis for judging if it functions well as a YA novel. My personal opinion is that the sequel, Half the World, is the best in the series.

[Hillary]

Brendan, reading this one made me want to finish out the series -- I'm now about 3/4 through Half a War. There are some things I thought worked better in the second book of the series -- but I tend to think the set-up in Half a King was part of making them work. I think Abercrombie did a good job of picking up with new protagonists and a mostly-new caste after only a short time jump (about 1-2 years) to both tell a complete tale & continue the larger story.

[[deleted user]]

I'm only about halfway through this one, even though it sure can a relatively easy read. It is after all, football season, and one must have priorities...

It does feel like a YA, if for no other reason than the hero is young and likable. I have avoided Abercrombie's First Law, because he has a reputation for liking the bad guys (much like Mark Lawrence), and I prefer my heroic fantasy with actual heroes. So a YA Abercrombie is probably a good fit for me.

It's been said that every fantasy author eventually gets a desire to take his story out to see. The stories were usually include seasickness, huge storms, sea monsters, and pirates. So far only half the boxes are checked. :)

[Brendan]

Hillary wrote: "Brendan, reading this one made me want to finish out the series -- I'm now about 3/4 through Half a War. There are some things I thought worked better in the second book of the series -- but I tend..."

Half a King was all kinds of set-up, and a lot of it isn't noticeable as set-up until you come across the payoffs in later books. But I mainly look at a novel as a discrete entity rather than how well it sets up other books, I rarely read trilogies or series these days.

G, First Law has lots of heroes, there's even a book called The Heroes! What could be more heroic than that? So many heroes.

[Kivrin]

G33z3r wrote: "I'm only about halfway through this one, even though it sure can a relatively easy read. It is after all, football season, and one must have priorities...

It does feel like a YA, if for no other r..."

I did like Half A King more because it's "hero" was likeable, and the story had a brighter outlook than some of this other books. I find Abercrombie's adult books to be very dark. I like his battle scenes, and his characters ARE interesting, but I can only take so much of them. His "Best Served Cold" is one of my most hated books because I just wanted all of the characters dead by the end.

[Brendan]

Best Served Cold is one of my favourite fantasy books ever. Love Monza.

[Kivrin]

Brendan wrote: "Best Served Cold is one of my favourite fantasy books ever. Love Monza."

To each his own! I like my "dark" in smaller doses!

[[deleted user]]

So, "ancient Elven ruins" are made of stone that looks more like it was molded than chiseled with rusted iron fingers sticking out the top. Concrete and rebar? Is Abercrombie pitching this medieval landscape as another post-collapse Earth?

[Kivrin]

G33z3r wrote: "So, "ancient Elven ruins" are made of stone that looks more like it was molded than chiseled with rusted iron fingers sticking out the top. Concrete and rebar? Is Abercrombie pitching this medieval..."

I think so. It's more obvious in the later books.

[Hillary]

G33z3r wrote: "So, "ancient Elven ruins" are made of stone that looks more like it was molded than chiseled with rusted iron fingers sticking out the top. Concrete and rebar? Is Abercrombie pitching this medieval landscape as another post-collapse Earth?"

I think so too. There's a point in Half a King where Yarvi observes a woman wearing a green elfstone with a complicated pattern of gold & jewels, which is where I became thoroughly convinced. Any geography buffs recognize the map? I'm thinking the elf-ruins of Strokom are Stockholm and the Divine River is the Western Dvina.

[Brendan]

That's really interesting. I never look at fantasy maps (didn't even notice some editions had one) so I didn't know that the locations in this series had real world analogues. Not too surprising, I guess. First Law also went for the "change real names slightly" method of fantasy place names. Sure Joe, nobody's going to notice "Angland."

[Hillary]

I think the religion is an interesting element of the Shattered World. On the one hand, Father Peace and Mother War and the rest of the tall & small seem kind of New Agey in comparison to Odin & co. On the other hand, the One God seems primarily inspired by Christianity (perhaps with a dash of Islam), and both Yarvi and the narration as a whole seem to view the One God as the more negative option: a dangerously authoritarian, monolithic threat to the kingdoms.

Then there's Yarvi's oath -- is the reader meant to think it has any value in this world beyond Yarvi's belief in it? It's evoked to justify a lot of decisions, esp. toward the end of the book. While the narrative doesn't quite buy in to all of Yarvi's self-rationalizations, I do feel like it's ultimately on the side of Yarvi keeping his oath.

[[deleted user]]

Hillary wrote: "Then there's Yarvi's oath -- is the reader meant to think it has any value in this world beyond Yarvi's belief in it?..."

I didn't attribute anything especially supernatural to the Oath in this world. Those are usually whatever the oath taker chooses to make of them, which is a combination of the depth of his/her belief in the gods on which they swear and/or their personal honor.

If someone were to break in oath, I imagine any bad things that happened would subsequently be blamed upon the gods, but ambiguously so both in the story and mind of the author. It doesn't usually do someone good to become known as an oath breaker, because then nobody trusts them.

Of course, the sequels might prove me wrong...

I'm trying to think if there are any examples in sword and sorcery heroic fantasy where there are deity-enforced consequences to breaking an oath (outside of the usual ancient Greek stuff.)

[Hillary]

I feel like there are a lot of fantasies where the protagonist keeps an oath either out of his/her own religious beliefs or personal sense of honor -- and since the protagonist is more often than not ultimately successful (it being generally more entertaining to read a struggled-and-overcame-the-odds story than a I-just-devoted-hours-of-my-life-to-these-people-&-they-all-just-died-in-obscurity story), the narrative often seems to validate the protagonists' perspective. Does that make the oath essentially a variation on the placebo effect, or is it the author endorsing the protagonists' views on the supernatural/fate?

I can think of a few fantasies where the oathbreakers are punished, but usu. only through the persistent intervention of the protagonists. Irish myth & a lot of fantasy based on it includes the concept of a geas, but I can't recall whether there are any Norse/Scandinavian parallels.

[Brendan]

The oath appears to have meaning to Yarvi, but it seems like more because he strongly wants to see it enacted than he's afraid of divine punishment. He doesn't seem to be a deeply religious person, and there is no evidence throughout the series I can tell of any divine actions.

(Series spoilers follow) (view spoiler)[Yarvi's arc over the three books was interesting to me, and very Abercrombie in that the hero Yarvi is just as bad as Wexen by then end of the third book. There's some hints of it in Half a King, but Yarvi being fairly amoral, and completely willing to deceive and sacrifice his allies if it helps him fulfill his oath really stood out to me. (hide spoiler)]

[[deleted user]]

Brendan wrote: "(Series spoilers follow).."

Speaking of the fact that this is the first book in a series, I was pleasantly surprised to find that this book was a nicely self-contained story, not something that ended on a "tune in next book..." to see how Yarvi's story works out.

Course, it obviously doesn't preclude a sequel, since there are couple, but it doesn't leave you with that unfinished feeling, either.

[Helen]

I'm about two thirds of the way through this book, and I'm enjoying Abercrombie's writing style. I picked up on the post-apocalyptic earth setting as well, and I found it interesting how he had the character refer to what happened as a religious event, a war against the one God. There's a theory that the plagues of Egypt in the bible are a retelling of the aftermath of the eruption at Thera (now Santorini), which devastated a lot of the ancient world, so it was interesting to read a parallel to that here. As for the story itself, it's a bit darker than a lot of the fantasy I've read, yet still very readable. It took a nice twist at the beginning, when I thought it would just be a 'unworthy King proves himself worthy' sort of tale. And interesting as well because nothing supernatural happens at all - rather it's just a human story set in a different time.(at least as far as I've read).