The Darkness That Comes Before is the first book of the Prince of Nothing trilogy by R. Scott Bakker (which is then followed by the Aspect Emperor trilogy).

Anasûrimbor Kellhus, a monk of the Dûnyain is a descendant of the high kings whose line was thought to have died out millenia ago (he might sound like Aragorn, but trust me, he’s really not.) Answering the call of his father, he sets out to find his destiny in the city of Shimeh. Meanwhile, the Shriah of the Thousand Temples (the majority religion) has called a Holy War to recapture Shimeh, which is in the hands of heathens. This Holy War is seen as an opportunity for advancement by many, including the the Emperor Ikurei Xerius III, who hopes to conquer all the lands his empire once held. Drusas Achamian, a sorcerer and spy, is sent into the middle of these events to look for an enemy that hasn’t been seen in centuries and that even he hardly believes in. Also caught in these events are the harlot Esmenet, the barbarian warrior Cnaiur, the princes Nersei Proyas and Ikurei Conphas, and hundreds of thousands of others.

The world of Eärwa is well-realised, with a complex religious and political system. Bakker throws you straight into it – you figure out a lot of the history and context through character dialogue rather than exposition. Although this can be a bit confusing at times, overall it’s immersive and makes the world feel very real.

The characters, on the other hand, weren’t as great. The protagonist, Kellhus, is cold and manipulative, focusing only on his mission to get to his father, and he doesn’t have any personality otherwise. His ability to predict and persuade people is supposedly based in the logic imparted in him through his Dûnyain training, but that’s extremely implausible, so I just thought of it as superpowers. In any case, he gets whatever he wants whenever he wants it, and he isn’t even likeable.

Out of the other main characters, Esmenet is self-pitying and cloying, Ikurei Xerius III is paranoid and self-absorbed, Ikurei Conphas is smarmy and power-hungry, Crainur is a murderous rapist, Serwë is a dimwit, Proyas is a zealot… I could go on. These aren’t just one facet of the characters – they are almost all defined by them. Drusus Achamian was the only compelling one – his internal conflicts are the most lifelike, his love for his ex-students versus his duty as a Mandate Schoolman, his inexplicable attraction to Esmenet, and his teetering faith in the existence of his enemy all make him sympathetic.

A lack of good women characters isn’t always a bad thing – especially in books with otherwise strong characters (for instance, in The First Law trilogy). However, Bakker’s treatment of women is absolutely atrocious. Every woman is a harlot – from dowager to street whore. The two main women, Esmenet and Serwë both make their living via sex. There are some very unpleasant revelations in the story made about the emperor’s mother, Ikurei Istriya. None of them are portrayed as intelligent, either. Even women mentioned only in passing are loose or sad – Cnaiur’s wives are constantly crying and his mother was easily seduced, Serwë met with nothing but jealousy from other women – that’s all we even hear about them.

All this makes for a pretty depressing book, and I’m still not sure if the worldbuilding and plotting makes up for it enough for me to want to continue with the series.

Over the last few months, I’ve picked up and read books by quite a few rising stars of fantasy (The Name of the Wind, The Warded Man, for example.) Brent Weeks was the one author I’d been hearing a LOT about but hadn’t read a book by yet, so I was pretty excited about The Way of Shadows.

Azoth has grown up on the streets with every aspect of his life subject to the whims of people stronger than him. He dreams of escape, ideally by apprenticing himself to Durzo Blint, the greatest master assassin alive. However, Blint famously does not take apprentices, and to be accepted, Azoth must prove himself by turning his back on his old identity, his friends and possibly his humanity.

New and edgy fantasy seems to have two major things – it’s more gritty and realistic and strong women characters. Weeks definitely succeeds on the “gritty” count, there’s plenty of rape, child sexual abuse, deaths of characters we like, a protagonist that kills innocent people for a living and so on. However, not only are there no strong women in the story, but all female characterisation seems to be derived from a hormonal teenager’s view of the world. Every woman is either oversexed and isn’t afraid to flaunt and use it (in an unflattering way, not in the unabashed and empowering way of the Kushiel’s Legacy series), or she’s a gentle and virginal soul that’s prone to giggling adorably. And regardless of their type, they are all beautiful and have big breasts that are talked about endlessly. (Momma K might seem like an exception but she’s actually just a hybrid of the two – the whore with a heart of gold.) The main love story of the book is laughable – I don’t want to spoil it, but let’s just say that I prefer romances that develop slowly from getting to know people. I thought I was annoyed by Peter V. Brett’s women in The Warded Man series, but this is way worse.

It’s not like the characterisation of men is great, but it’s still much better than that of the women. Azoth is a passable protagonist, but his motivations and thought process were never clear to me, so I was unable to connect with him. As a child, it was easy, he had a miserable life and Blint was the most feared man in the city and was likely to keep him safe. As he grew up, even though most of the book was from his point of view, it felt like I was watching him from a stranger’s eyes. Blint seemed a bit more sympathetic, but his self-loathing is justified in the book. Logan is a Mary Sue with no real personality except perfection. The only characters I enjoyed were the three mages from Sho’cendi.

Another problem was that the book didn’t flow well. We start with some scenes when Azoth was young, then there are some chapters where Azoth is portrayed at different ages with transitions like “Now he was sixteen.” These sections don’t seem to add anything to the plot, and were way too abrupt. There were also an innumerable amount of POV characters, often 3 or 4 in a chapter (and some characters got only one POV in the entire book.) There are some books in which this is executed well, but in this one, it was disjointed and seemed like a cheap way of letting the reader know what was going on while sacrificing characterisation and suspense.

There were some things I liked about the book, like the concept of a criminal underworld controlling the Kingdom, but not enough. I don’t think I’ll be bothering with Shadow’s Edge.

A Shadow in Summer is book 1 of The Long Price Quartet. The empire of Galt has been making war against the entire world with their powerful machines, but the cities of the Khaiem are not afraid. They are protected by their poets who control the andat, physical manifestations of a certain idea bound by the poet’s words. However these poets are growing rare and there is a plot brewing that could undermine the security that the city of Saraykhet has enjoyed for so long. The city’s fate lies in the hands of a poet’s apprentice, a manual labourer, an aging overseer of a merchant house and her young and beautiful apprentice.

There is a gaping plot hole in this book that makes it somewhat hard to enjoy. Skip the next paragraph if you don’t want to be spoiled.

SPOILERS There is a convoluted plot to free Saraykhet’s andat that depend on a very precise sequence of events and a good deal of conjecture. However, a much simpler plot would have been to simply assassinate the city’s poet, who is constantly wandering around the city unprotected and drunk. Since the whole book is centered around this plot, it falls kind of flat. At the end, the poet gets assassinated by one of the good guys to “save the city” – it seems a lame excuse to create internal conflict for the main character. END SPOILERS

Other than the plot hole, though, the book is pretty good. I enjoyed the writing and the characters, especially Amat the extremely competent overseer. It’s not often that you have female characters in their fifties being protagonists in a fantasy novel.

The story is well told, although somewhat matter of fact.  Abraham’s characters are very decisive and pragmatic, almost to a fault – any internal conflict is either resolved or put aside to deal with pressing matters. This makes the book fast reading, but the characters aren’t as likeable or sympathetic, and it made the characters’ actions not really have any impact on me.

I’ll be reading A Betrayal in Winter, but I’m not in any huge rush.

This is a catch up review for Ship of Magic, the first book in the Liveship Traders trilogy. This trilogy stands by itself, but it is set in the same world as the Farseer trilogy, although the setting and characters are almost completely different.

This is also the series that made me a huge fan of Robin Hobb. Although I liked the Farseer trilogy (see my reviews of book 1, book 2 and book 3), the ending left me a bit confused and I really wanted to see the world sketched out a bit more. Hobb certainly does that and a lot more.

The story begins in the port city of Bingtown, a heavily taxed but otherwise neglected exclave of the nation of Jamallia. Bingtown Trader families are famous for their liveships – vessels carved from a special type of wood that ripens into sentience after three people in the family die aboard. Althea Vestrit has been waiting all her life for their ship Vivacia to quicken – even with the sadness of her father’s death accompanying it. She has grown up on board the ship and fully expects to inherit it, but when it actually happens, she’s in for a nasty shock – the ship instead goes to her greedy brother-in-law Kyle. Althea’s gentle cousin Wintrow is training to be a priest and greatly enjoying it, but his father Kyle is determined to make a sailor out of him – by force if necessary. The newly awakened and confused Vivacia needs someone with Vestrit blood aboard her, but all she has is Wintrow, imprisoned upon her against his will. And there’s Kennit who is not satisfied with being the most successful pirate of his time, and his plans will lead him directly into Vivacia’s path.

Hobb is never unduly kind to her characters – she makes them work really hard and go through a lot (it’s almost physically painful to read about sometimes, but at least it pays off in the end, unlike some authors I could name.) They are not Chosen Ones – they are just fairly ordinary people that only become heroes because they care about something very much, and will cross any obstacles for it. Althea is no exception – she’s stubborn, spirited and impertinent. I found myself alternating between cheering for her and being exasperated at her obstinate sense of entitlement. She loves Vivacia and after a few days of utter despair, makes up her mind that she will do anything to get her back – including proving her seamanship by enlisting on a dangerous whaling ship. Wintrow is also very well written, especially his relationship to Vivacia. He resents her because her need for Vestrit blood has chained him to her, but he also recognises that she’s sad and confused and needs his help.

Another thing I love about Hobb’s fantasy is that there are no straight up villains. Everyone is complex and changeable, and Kennit is no exception. He’s got some backstory behind his desire to capture a liveship, and he prides himself on being just and practical, and he’s even kind most of the time. He also manipulates people for his own ends, but Hobb never portrays it as evil – he’s just the product of his circumstances. The supporting cast is also really well envisioned – especially other Vestrit women (Ronica, Keffria and Malta.)

The plot is really just a function of the characters’ natural actions – although there is the lingering issue of the sea serpents. Hobb’s descriptive writing and the complex history of Bingtown and the Rain Wilds really brings the setting to life.

Highly recommended, even if you’ve never read anything else by Hobb.