It's been a while since I've done some book reviews, so I'm going to try to get back in the habit. Since I've expanded my categories now, each book review will contain the genre or age category.
One book I finished recently was The Grim Company by Luke Scull. I wasn't sure about it going in, mainly because of the title. As I've mentioned before, I'm not the biggest fan of the Grimdark movement in recent fantasy. I'm fine with worlds having some grit and realism, but I've found many stories take this to an extreme, filling their worlds with utterly despicable main characters.
To my surprise, Scull didn't do that. Yes, our main characters were still antiheroes, but they were antiheroes I connected with. This didn't happen for me with some of Joe Abercrombie's characters.
I've read many reviews comparing The Grim Company to Abercrombie's work. While there are undeniably some similarities, mainly in the type of main characters and in the tone, there are also quite a few differences. For one thing, Abercrombie writes more in the low-fantasy vein, where there's some magic, but not a whole lot. Scull's world is very much a high-fantasy world, with tons of magic, where Magelords rule the world's nations.
There's also some pretty cool backstory involving, with the Magelords conquering the gods and then introducing their iron-fisted regimes. Their troops, the Augmentors, are also pretty cool. In all, the world kind of seems like one you might see in a fantasy video game (and that's not a bad thing). I think Scull's biography states that he also works on games, so there probably is some influence there.
Overall, I enjoyed this story. It had its rough patches, but I'm intrigued enough to see where it's going.
Rating: 7.5/10
No comments:
Post a Comment