Apr 19, 2016 11:12 AM
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Half a king is the first book in the shattered sea trilogy, and it came out in July 2014 and it is 320 pages long, written by Joe Abercrombie. I will categorize half a king as a young adult, low fantasy kind of grim dark story. Joe Abercrombie definitely classifies himself as one of the kings of the grim dark genre.
The story follows our main character Yarvi, who is the second son of the king of Gettland. Yarvi is born with a deformed hand, so he is disabled, crippled and because of that he is often picked on and never taken seriously. And because of his deformity instead of being an heir of the royal court, he will end up becoming a minister. But one day Yarvi entire future is completely changed when his older brother and his father the king got assassinated, which means Yarvi is next in line for the throne and he will be the next king. His entire life is completely shattered in front of him, and he takes himself as a half a king and he never takes himself seriously and even other people never take him seriously. And he is in a very pessimistic kind of mood.
Because of Yarvi father and brother got assassinated he goes on a revenge mission. So the story is all about Yarvi and his plight to exact revenge on people who are involved in planning the assassination of his brother and his father. This story is also about Yarvi growing up and coming in terms with his own self.
Eventhough there is not a lot of magic in this novel but the world building is something to look forward to, the complete idea of the shattered sea is very Viking in a way to me which I really enjoy. The entire world seems a very well imagined, and it is definitely better projected than the other Viking kind of fantasy novels that I have read. I also enjoyed reading different religious aspect of the book, for example shattered gods which we will read know about in future novels which I am very excited about.
This novel focuses on Yarvi for the most part, which works really well for the development of the story and I think the character development is really well done, but I do wish that some of the other character had a bit of more character development because at times I felt that I don’t remember who is who and I am at times really intrigued what is going to happen to other interesting character as the story progress. The last thing which I really loved about the characters is none of them is really all good or all dark, even Yarvi has his moments when he is not the best character nor acted like an idolic youth which usually what fantasy books have for their protagonist.
The novel start of a bit slow and I think you have to be 50 or 75 pages in before the story really start to get going, but the rest of the plot is really really fast pace and everything moved really smoothly and everything is very well plotted. And you can see how thoughtfully everything is constructed. I think this is the reason why this is one of the best young adult fantascy book because its manages to be under 400 pages while still delivering a complelling story with complelling characters and really interesting world which is something you don’t see very often in young adult fantasy books which really set it apart because it has such a clean plot progression. Because of that I do think that there are some young adult fantasy reader who will not be entirely satisfied by it. But looking at this novel from a young adult prospective, I think it rises above and beyond the genre.
The last thing which I will include in this review is that the writing manages to be both poetic and straight forward which manages to make the story very tight.
