I’ve read reviews that say the first book feels more like fan-fiction than a novel and I can see what they mean. It is occasionally more explicit than I am comfortable with, and there are some unpleasant scenes which account for the scattering of 1-star reviews on Amazon.
Had I not been assured that it gets better, I would have put the first book aside in the manner of a nervous maiden aunt. This would be a good place to stress that you must know what you’re letting yourself in for. Second, he shows absolutely no interest in treating Damen as the Veretians usually treat slaves. First, the notoriously cruel and cold Prince Laurent of Vere hasn’t been told the identity of his new slave. The very prince whose brother Damen killed in battle some years earlier. The wretched situation does have two silver linings, though. Stripped of his identity, shackled and chained, this noble warrior is sent by his usurping half-brother Kastor as a gift to the prince of the enemy kingdom of Vere. While Abercrombie’s hero Yarvi ends up as a galley slave, Pacat’s Damianos of Akielos (known as Damen) has an even worse fate in store. Funnily enough, I read the first part immediately after Half a Kingand found myself in déjà vu territory of murdered kings, wicked relatives, and princes sold into slavery. The three books are each relatively short and feel like separate parts of the same story, rather than distinct volumes: hence my decision to deal with them all together. At that point I decided that everyone’s entitled to a bit of froth once in a while, and thought I’d do a quick post on the trilogy – if only because, as Kerstin’s interest indicates, there’s more here for Dunnett readers than you might initially expect. But I wasn’t going to own up to it until I saw a photo that Kerstin posted on Facebook, while lazing in the garden with her Kindle, and noticed that she was reading it too. Pacat’s trilogy is bad: on the contrary, it’s an engaging tale of political skulduggery and brooding romance. Instead, my brain cheerfully clocks out and I end up reading stuff like this.
In an ideal world, I’d use long journeys to finally read that second volume of Proust, catch up on some Herodotus, or focus on foreign-language exhibition catalogues.
0 kommentar(er)
