Joe Abercrombie, ‘The Blade Itself’

I’ve been saving this one up for a while. Looked at it in Waterstones, saw it had good cover reviews, had a bit of a read and liked what I found, then thought ‘No, wait till he finishes the series‘. I would have done, too, except that I found a copy for 99p in the local charity shop. (Joe Abercrombie or other interested parties, if by some chance you’re reading this, I promise I’ll buy the other volumes new. Honest.)

The thing which charmed me, very early on, is that the ‘survivors’ of one chapter heading turn out to be a man and his cooking pot. Brilliant. Why? Well, it says something about the character and the situation he’s in, as well as entertaining the reader. It’s original. It’s an unexpected, perfect little moment.

I also loved the introduction of one of the major characters: again originality was the key. You begin by hearing the thoughts of a crippled man attempting to go down a flight of stairs, and a few pages later you’re surprisingly enlightened about who he is and how he thinks. I’m also a sucker for morally dubious characters with whom you can sympathise, which is fiendishly hard to do. By making him enter the book when he’s at one of his weakest moments, and by letting us straight inside his head, Abercrombie jumps us over several hurdles, so that when we then find out his occupation we already rather like him and it’s too late for him to be a plain and simple villain.

(Yes, that’s intended to be tantalising. Read the book.)

The rest of the book is never dull, though perhaps the virtuoso beginning was a bit much to live up to. Unlike ‘The Adamantine Palace‘ (which apparently Joe Abercrombie enjoyed: wonder why?) ‘The Blade Itself’ manages to show a world which is corrupt, dark and violent, but still compelling because of the life breathed into every detail of character and surroundings. The story-telling is brisk, often humorous and never predictable.

The only problem with this book comes from the nature of trilogies. This is in no sense a stand-alone novel: it only makes sense as the first part of a larger story. It’s more common for fantasy writers to construct the overall work so that each published volume has its own internal shape of beginning, middle and end. This felt more like one long beginning, setting up both the war and the journey, the stories of which will presumably be told in the next book. It might not matter in the context of the trilogy as a whole, but it does mean the experience of reading this first volume is a little frustrating. I’ll wait till the whole work’s out before going back. Hopefully shouldn’t be too long now, as we seem to be at the large paperback stage for vol. 3.

Oh, one more thing: it needs a map. Any story which involves international relations and strategic military manoevuring needs to show us where all these places are in relation to each other. Fingers crossed.　

(PC: A)

Punctuation: why I give a bugger

This is somewhat in the nature of a rant. You have been warned. I’ll try and keep it short.

I’m going to moan about the decline of standards. In order to give this context, I’ll add that I’m 36.

I keep coming across books whose authors can’t punctuate a sentence, and whose editors and proof-readers don’t seem to have spotted this. It’s driving me barmy.  

I don’t mind when people who know what they’re doing choose to break the rules for reasons of style or impact. I’m just driven to swearing when it’s obvious that an author doesn’t know what he’s doing (pronoun chosen because all the worst offenders so far have been men, coincidence though this may be) and that therefore his prose is jerking and flopping about like a freshly-caught halibut.

You may be asking how on earth I can tell the difference? I’m omniscient. No, maybe not. But I do know that punctuation gives a rhythm to text, and that incorrect punctuation makes it ‘sound’ wrong in my head. I was ranting about Peter F. Hamilton (whom I otherwise think is really talented) to my husband, who was bemused because he hadn’t noticed the problem and possibly wouldn’t care as much if he had. Well, he’s lucky. For me, reading a book where full stops should be commas and commas should be (semi-)colons (and even, in one recent dire case, full stops should be question marks) is like watching television where the picture keeps flickering, or listening to the radio with the buzz of interference. You just don’t want to.

I can’t remember learning much about punctuation at school. I remember the odd spelling test, but I don’t think they usually gave me words to learn that I couldn’t spell already. I soaked up nearly all of what I know about both punctuation and spelling without much effort simply because I read a lot. If published books get it wrong…

I don’t want to repeat this rant, and I have a feeling I’m going to be tempted, so I think from now on books I mention will get a punctuation code.

A: No problems

B: One or two things I noticed, but hey, everyone makes mistakes

C: Oh God, not again