Progress: 15%

Not sure how to feel just yet. Lead character sounds interesting, with his grim background and thirst for destruction.

Yet the writing / narrating style are difficult to deal with (could be just me). It seems that the authors loves using expensive words to make his point - thesaurus anyone?

for example:

“You could see his body limned in the light […]”.

What’s wrong with simply saying “his body was lined by the moonlight”?”

I have already had to open my dictionary more in the first 5 chapters than I had to in my last 3 books.

On top of that, the perspective and the wat everything is written makes it hard to follow what’s going on and although I “think” I know what’s happening, I have actually no clue as what’s going on. I found myself reading certain pages a few times over because I wasn’t sure if he had actually done anything or was just contemplating it.

e.g

“I stuck Gemt with my knife then. I didn’t need to, but I wanted it. He danced pretty enough too, bubble bubble on his blood, and fell off his horse. His red face went pale quick enough.

“Maical,” I said. “Take his head.”

And he did.

Gemt just chose a bad moment

Can I get a “dafuq??”, anyone?

It occurs to me that it might be hard to “understand” the actions in the story because the main character is hard to understand.

Progress: 90%

The story feels devoid of any emotion despite all the action, blood and gore, despite the fact that there are powerful things at play like jealousy, sour father-son relationships, betrayal, murder, rape, …

The story is gritty to the bone, and yet it doesn’t manage to evoke a single emotion in me.

The narrative style keeps baffling me and I think that this is to blame for the lack of feeling. The story itself feels strong but it just feels like the author didn’t bother writing out more than the outlines of it.

Some quotes to show the writing style:

The glitter along that knife edge as she came at me, the thought of it slicing my flesh, piercing an eye maybe, these are all the sort of thing that might give a man pause.

I don’t know what Lawrence’s game is here, but I’m pretty sure we shouldn’t count Jorg as a classic anti-hero (something I love btw), because he’s just an utter piece of shit, the whole time through. To roughly sum Jorg up: He’s an insane psychopath with a thirst for blood.

Progress: 100%

Ehm, now that I’m finished, I’m not entirely sure how I feel about this. I can definitely say that I don’t think the book is amazing, or even good in my eyes. It’s not something I really enjoyed and I doubt I’ll be picking up the successor.

But in the end, there is something to say for it I guess, I just think that it’s not the right book for me at this time. The writing ‘feels’ crafted and deliberate, even though it’s my biggest problem with the book.

To conclude: I think that the only reason I finished the book is because it was rather short and I kept hoping for something amazing to happen to make it all right. Unfortunately… it didn’t.