G'day, eh.
I guess that all the snow on the ground marks it as winter here, still.
Jennifer and I are avoiding going out mostly. We do get a bit of apartment fever so we then go out and usually do a bit of shopping to break the doldrums.
Glad your little Victorian vacation worked well, in spite of sniffles and such.
Bye the bye, I just finished reading the Joe Abercrombie's 'The First Law' trilogy. Enjoyed it quite a bit. Do you have any next read suggestions?
Adios amoeba,
ColinExcerpt - Colin Campbell, Letters.
Hey, Colin, good to hear from you! It's funny, in spite of the fact that his first book, The Blade Itself, was published in 2006, I was completely unaware of Joe Abercrombie until 2011 when I stumbled across one of his books in a Waterstones book store in London. Still, better late than never, he's been a welcome addition to my little library. He has a distinctive approach to storytelling, his characters are complicated and nuanced, and his grimdark approach to fantasy makes for gritty, bloody and believable narrative.
The good news is that, in addition to a sequel trilogy, there are several equally good Abercrombie novels set in the same world as The First Law. Best Served Cold (as you might imagine, revenge is the central theme) is arguably the best - no pun intended. Apparently a film adaptation was under way back in 2023, with a screenplay written by Abercrombie, but it appears to no longer be an active project. The Heroes and Red Country are both good reads as well, and I've seen these three books packaged as a set under the title The Great Leveller. No spoilers, but Red Country answers a big question left by The Last Argument of Kings, it's probably worth reading just for that.
Sharp Ends is a collection of related short stories, grace notes if you will, for the characters of the original trilogy. Entertaining, although maybe a bit confusing for anyone who somehow starts their Abercrombie reading with this book - fortunately you're covered on that.
The Age of Madness sequel trilogy, made up of A Little Hatred, The Trouble With Peace, and The Wisdom of Crowds, is perhaps not quite as good as the original series, but still pretty good. In many ways it's The First Law: The Next Generation.
For something unrelated to The First Law, I would recommend The Devils, Abercrombie's latest, which I just finished as part of my New Year's resolution reading. It's a shame we don't live in the same city anymore, I actually have two copies of that one in hardcover (long story), but it's probably cheaper for you to buy a copy than for me to ship one to you. Half a King is good - it's part of a trilogy, but I've only read the first one, I should follow up on that.
I don't recall if we've discussed K. J. Parker, aka British author Tom Holt? One of my favourite Parkers is Mightier Than The Sword, a fun little novella that's quite good but probably a bit hard to find in paper form, there's probably a Kindle version on Amazon.
The Engineer Trilogy is good, The Fencer Trilogy perhaps a bit less so, depending on your tastes. They've both been out for a few years and would probably be easy to find used, if you want to save a little money. I enjoyed the Siege series, which is only nominally a trilogy: Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City, How to Rule an Empire and Get Away With It, and A Practical Guide to Conquering the World; and the Saevus Corax books are entertaining (and an actual trilogy: Saevus Corax Deals With the Dead, Saevus Corax Captures the Castle, and Saevus Corax Gets Away With Murder.)
All other plot points aside, Saevus Corax makes his living by cleaning up battlefields as a commercial service, which makes for an amusing backdrop regarding the economic practicalities of salvaging and repairing the tools of war so that you can sell them - in some cases, back to the original owners, if any of them are still alive.
My only objection to Parker is that, as with watching too many episodes of Gilmore Girls in a row, after a while all of his characters start to sound a little bit the same - I'll be curious to see if you have the same reaction.
Anyway, let me know if any of those ring the bell! Keep warm, and all my best to Jennifer and Max the Cat.
- Sid
P.S. Have you read any of Richard Morgan's A Land Fit for Heroes series - The Steel Remains, The Cold Commands, and The Dark Defiles? Also quite a good trilogy. You probably know Morgan from the three Takeshi Kovacs books, Altered Carbon et al., if not, I strongly recommend them as well (hard cybernoir SF rather than fantasy, though.)
