[Obdigore]

RodeoRanch, on 12 February 2010 - 09:32 PM, said:

I really enjoyed his first trilogy. Looking forward to picking up "Best Served Cold" someday.

And for the record, I fucking hate Bakker's stuff. Really. You couldn't pay me to read any of it again.

I managed to get through Bakkers first trilogy. I didn't like up, but everyone was so up on it I figured it must get better. It didn't.

[Ribald]

Abercrombie strikes me as the natural successor to David Gemmell. He seems to have advanced Gemmell's story telling techniques to the next stage of development.

I was going to go on a long rambling discourse here but am tired and have decided to do it another time. Suffice to say I think he is more like Gemmell than Martin or Erikson.

[alt146]

The thing with Abercrombie is that he writes an almost post-modernistic approach to fantasy and he tries to subvert it's many tropes as often as possible. Unfortunatley this falls flat as often as it makes for a refreshing read. I haven't read best served cold yet, so I can't really comment on it though. Some of the stuff in the first law was great, while other things really irritated me. I liked Glotka (sp?) and most of the northerners, and the fight scenes were pretty good (although I agree, not nearly as good as Stover). Stuff like the long-ass journey in the second book irritated the crap out of me. I can see what he was trying to do, in that it was an inversion of the classic heroe's journey to find powerful artefact, but so little actually happens on the way there, and then they make it back in about a paragraph. 'Negative' character development is one thing, but to deliberately bring his characters close to redemption and then slam them back down time and time again got a little old. Once might have been a little tragic, after that it was too much. And the ending of the series wasnt really an ending at all, essentially nothing has changed - the main threat hasnt been addressed, the old wizard has just manipulated everything back to his status quo. Once again it's a pretty good inversion of the way most fantasy novels end, but it's pretty frustrating. So I can admire the choices that he made in writing the book and think he did (what I perceive at least) what he set out to do, but it's exactly those choices that make the books a little unsatisfying.

[QuickTidal]

RodeoRanch, on 12 February 2010 - 09:32 PM, said:

I really enjoyed his first trilogy. Looking forward to picking up "Best Served Cold" someday.

And for the record, I fucking hate Bakker's stuff. Really. You couldn't pay me to read any of it again.

Me and Rodeo are of one Canadian mind on this. Bakker's writing made me want to go to his house in London Ont, egg the place and then tear up the books into little bits and sprinkle liberally over the egg goo, Thus creating an egg-based paper mache.

[alestar]

I have enjoyed everything from Abercrombie to date, although I read the 4 books consecutively, so Best Served Cold was basically a continuation of the trilogy for me...

All that being said, I read to relax and enjoy myself, so I appreciate "easy" reads. Books that require me to learn a new language or having to re-read paragraphs/pages/chapters to figure out what the brilliant author is trying to tell my dumb ass, is not for me.

Abercrombie good, me like.

[Puck]

As many other people, I enjoyed - well, actually loved - the First Law trilogy. I continued to like the writing style and atmosphere in Best Served Cold. Still, I thought BSC was a bit meh. My main problem was, tbh, that I felt like he was trying to recycle the character concepts from the trilogy into the stand-alone, which didn't quite work for me. Look, we have a mean cripple with a soft spot, a barbarian who seeks to become a better human being and a priggish bastard as main protagonists in the trilogy. In BSC we have.. a mean cripple with a soft spot - female version - , a barbarian who seeks to become a better human being and a priggish bastard. Oh, and a lunatic as a side dish. I certainly don't have to identify with a main character to enjoy a story and I love me a villain as a protagonist, but the case that the protagonists in BSC seemed to me like copies not quite reaching up to their originals [I've been in love with Glokta from the first page he appeared in The Blade Itself] left a sour taste on my literary tongue and kept jarring, while otherwise the book was quite enjoyable and got going at the latest by the time Cosca and Vitari made their appearances. They kind of saved the book for me. They and the goat.

[Puck]

Kityhawk, on 16 February 2010 - 02:06 AM, said:

I agree with you that he seemed to recycle characters but Monza as the new Glokta errrr..... I just can't see it. I mean just where is her soft spot?? Personally I can't see one thing she does in the book that even comes close to any of Glokta's good deeds but...

Spoiler

I suppose you could say her not killing Shivers at the end could be one of them. But it didn't really seem like that to me.

Nah, I was talking about Benna [or what's his name]. Monza goes Benna here Benna there all the book, she'd do anything for him. Btw. I sniffed what's up with her and her brother from the very beginning, as well as I saw the end coming. A bit of a let down. As I said, the book was not bad in my opinion, but still kinda meh.