Just......wow

The voice of this book grabs you from the first paragraph and doesn't let you go til the last sentence. It was brutal-sometimes making you want to cover your eyes, but there is also a balance filled with the pain and rage of lost innocence.

I am quickly moving on to the next despite the overpriced Kindle version.

Favorite Line:

“Father Gomst will pray for your soul,” I said. “And forgive me the sins I incur in detaching it from your body.” ( )

Despite having a very young boy as a protagonist, this story is dark. And I would have love it so much if it didn't keep jumping back and forth between the past and present. ( )

I didn't like the book that much. Mainly because I don't like the atmosphere. The main character, Jorg is inhuman: he only feels hate and anger. The writing reflects that, in that it is unemotional. This makes it difficult to bond with the characters. Aside from that, the main character mostly wobbles over the stage, changing direction, flinging himself at fights without apparent direction. I can sort of appreciate his brutality, but it makes the book rather narrow. Particularly, since the writing style is rather focused. I feel I only know what the main character sees and nothing else. In the end, I didn't really care that much about what would happen to Jorg, and therefore also did not care that much about picking up the book and reading on.
I finished it because I'm going to discuss it with my reading club, and I don't know if I would have finished it otherwise. ( )

This, I gather, is the first in a series and the author's debut novel. I wanted to like it more, but I'm afraid the viewpoint of a thirteen-going-on-fourteen amoral boy who does bad things just to be a badass, but is written as much older than that - even in the flashbacks to where he is ten - was wearing, and at times not that convincing. Briefly, four years before the story begins, when he was ten years old, Prince Jorg witnessed the brutal slaying of his mother and younger brother, and was badly injured himself. After a slow and painful recovery, he vows to expunge all traces of compassion, love, and any other positive emotion from himself, on the basis that he can't be hurt again if he has no attachments.

The story begins when he and the ragtag band of bandits he leads have just wiped out most of the inhabitants of a village and are now enjoying the aftermath of finishing off the wounded and indulging in a bit of rape/pillage and general ultraviolence. The implication is that Jorg joins in with the rape - he talks about a farmer's two daughters and giving one "a twist here or there just to check she hadn't died of fright" and then how he doesn't suppose they were quiet when the fire reached them. So not content with the previous atrocities, he and his men burn the women in the inn where they attacked them, just for the fun of it, as is much of the brutality in this book.

It seemed unlikely at first that the psychopaths and others he was leading would accept a young teenage boy as their leader, but eventually that is explained through the various flashbacks to what happened four years previously. Jorg was supposed to be seeking vengeance for the deaths of his mother and brother, but has somehow been sidetracked along the way by the enjoyment derived from the pointless killing of complete strangers. That, too, is later explained, as is much of his sick attitude - but there was enough of that before the incident (where a sorceror hypnotises him) to indicate that the flaw is really in him to begin with or he would not have left for dead the tutor who loved him and tried to defend him from the bandit leader .

There were a few sympathetic characters in the story, but most of them were killed off and a between-chapter aside indicates that the other later stands trial for his part in Jorg's crimes. One element that made the book veer into science fictional territory is that this seems to be in the far future where modern civilisation has, after what seems to have been a nuclear war, reverted to a pseduo medieval society, but one splintered into a myriad of petty kingdoms though a past Empire is remembered. This is hinted at from the start with Jorg's reading of ancient Greek philosophers, but the book remains firmly in fantasy territory with its ghosts and reanimated dead, one scene of which was reminiscent from the old Ray Harryhausen 'Jason and the Argonauts' film.

I've gathered that this book falls into the grimdark genre, and I certainly think it is more a resident there than the first volume of a Joe Abercrombie trilogy that I read just before it. Unlike the Abercrombie, which has light and shade, and characters leading normal lives as well as more extreme ones who torture people for the Inquisition, this is all rather one note, with just one atrocity piled up on another, and all from the single viewpoint of one character, a sardonic nihilistic one who delights in dark humour. Those around him are distinguished, sometimes very scantily, by a single characteristic such as being old or fat, or very loyal, or a total pyscho, but that's as far as it goes. There are some good action sequences, and there is interest in the background of lingering high tech and the negative effects on the present, but it is just as well that this volume reads as a fairly self-contained story. There is a hint at the end of more to come, but I won't be seeking out the rest of the trilogy. For me, an OK 2 star read only. ( )

A significant amount of buzz has arisen regarding this book and rightfully so. The premise is incredibly intriguing. A young prince, traumatized by injustice and suffering learns the wrong lessons and seeks out his own path of justice. It's KILL BILL without the romanticized violence.

Jorg is a character who easily eschews what we would consider a standard fantasy protagonist. He's young, prone to savage violence and morally bankrupt. He will sacrifice those loyal to him and itches to butcher those who annoy him. Despite this he evades the classification of an anti-hero. He's a hero of unfortunate circumstances. The pain of a cruel life has warped his mind and made him insane. The bandages weren't applied soon enough and the resulting wounds haven't healed properly. We see the exact same thing happen with child soldiers or foster children from abusive homes who are witness to horrible atrocity. Unfortunately for Jorg, medieval style counseling and therapy don't exist.

Jorg is growing up in the remnant of our own ruined world. The wreckage of civilization is more present in men's hearts than the scenery. Jorg is corrupt because the authority figures in his life are as well. Very few reprimand or correct his misdeeds and nobody takes his pain seriously. The rest are scared of him. Nevertheless Jorg is compelling and sympathetic in spite of his moral and mental distance from our understanding.

But it wasn't the violence, neither was it Jorg's moral state that I didn't prefer about this novel. I think I would have wanted a longer story. I'm aware that higher page counts don't make books great. I'm sure Mark Lawrence made it the exact length that he felt was needed. Luckily if its the thickness of the spine I'm worried about I could always read King of Thorns to get my papers worth of story.

Admittedly, I've been jaded by reading other stories that play the "this is the future but everything is back to feudal times" card. A Canticle for Leibowitz seems a stronger exploration of a collapsed society than Prince of Thorns. Here it just feels like extra scenery and is so brief in description that I'm unsure why the author chose to include it. Stephen King does a much better job at integrating talking computers and robots with elements of fantasy in his Dark Tower series than is done here. Spoiler alert, there is a talking computer.

Sometimes when you read a book the pieces just don't come together...for the reader. That's how I felt about Prince of Thorns. That doesn't mean the book is horrible or the writing is bad. The story doesn't lag and Lawrence's command of language is exceptional. It may just mean that I wasn't in the right frame of mind when I read it. Perhaps I was craving a different flavour and was disappointed when I tasted steak instead of veal.

When writing my first three sentence review I was in a rush, didn't have a lot of time and was unsure how to express why I didn't like this book. Mark Lawrence has earned credit and applause for all his hard work and for the story that he has accomplished. I do hope that you'll buy his book and read it, because he deserves it.

It's a good book, just one I didn't like. The star rating I give it reflects my opinion, not the reality. ( )