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S'està carregant… Best Served Cold (edició 2012)de Joe Abercrombie (Autor)
Informació de l'obraBest Served Cold de Joe Abercrombie
S'està carregant…
Apunta't a LibraryThing per saber si aquest llibre et pot agradar. No hi ha cap discussió a Converses sobre aquesta obra. The book starts strong, with sharp banter between two long-standing companions. Their relationship is unclear, but we know them to be highly skilled mercenaries. This offhand dialogue introduces keys to the main character’s behaviour through the rest of the book. After a brutal betrayal, the main protagonist, Monza Murcatto, turns from mercenary work to the single-minded goal of revenge. This book is the story of her journey. Set in a medieval world of swords, battles, grinding poverty, and ostentatious wealth – it helps to think 11th century England – there is an active, ongoing war among the heads of various territories to become the ruler over all. Referred to by the inhabitants as the Years of Blood, it is clear that the acquisitive obsessions of the various dukes have created a 19-year-long, grinding, bloody, tedious, wasteful siege-state among the peoples. The varied characters are introduced well, and their facets are revealed to us in measured and organic ways as they pursue their own objectives, both clear and hidden. Shivers, Morveer, Cosca, Vitari: each are recruited systematically by Monza as she moves relentlessly towards her objective. These compatriots are interesting and engaging; we want to know more about them and their goings on, and the novel is sufficiently well written that it had me rapidly turning the pages. However. About half way through the book, it begins to be a bit of a slog. Things become repetitive: descriptions of battles, a person’s characteristics, catchphrases (“Mercy and cowardice are the same thing.”) These same phrases and sentences are repeated, and repeated, and…repeated. For example, we have been with Monza through 70% of the book, learning more and more about her mercenary character (“the Butcher of Caprile”) and the many, many battles she has orchestrated and won, when we get the following phrase: “in her experience, and she had plenty, …”. Yes. We get it. She’s had a lot of experience. We’ve been reading about that experience, in detail, for the last 300 pages. And speaking of detail, while the depiction of violence is necessary to evoke the times and to make the author’s point, it does eventually cross over into violence porn: paragraph after paragraph full of detailed depictions of gruesome acts: gory and excessive violence, gouging, maiming, dismemberment, disembowling, torture. Repetitive and unnecessary. There is also a lot of somewhat gratuitous swearing that gets in the way of the storytelling. Though around since the late 15th century, “fuck” is generally perceived as a modern word. Used as noun, verb, adjective, including all compounds of the word, does not lend a medieval revenge tale any more authenticity. In fact, in most cases, its use was jarring and only served to break me out of the narrative flow. Periodically there are attention-grabbing turns of phrase: sarcastic praise for a colleague, “a diamond in the shit”; an amusing collective noun, “a haggle of merchants”. Occasionally, there is sharp, energetic dialogue between the main characters that can easily be read as either forced jocularity or pathos. Highly enjoyable, it wasn’t enough to compensate for the long, tiresome stretches. The book rallies in the last 120 pages. As the body count of Monza’s compatriots begins to climb, we are less and less certain of how things will end. Given the heavy-handed messaging by the author against the stupidity of war, the pettiness of tyrants, and the betrayal of politics, we begin to realize that Monza will likely not achieve her goal, and may not live past the next chapter. It is here that the author makes several sharp observations about the malleable nature of people and the expediencies of politics. Strong at the beginning, and strong at the end – the middle is soggy with repetition and tedious illustration of the book’s message. Judicious editing would have made the book one-third shorter, and made for a tighter, tenser novel. Possible candidate for airplane reading.
This inevitably makes Best Served Cold something of a novel of parts—some very good, exhilarating or terrifying or amusing, but no more a coherent whole for that. The frenetic plot does, however, feed into a broader aesthetic of denial, even if it could have been more elegantly done Joe Abercrombie takes the grand tradition of high fantasy literature and drags it down into the gutter, in the best possible way. Pertany a aquestes sèriesFirst Law World (1) Premis
Fantasy.
Fiction.
Historical Fiction.
HTML:Springtime in Styria. And that means war. There have been nineteen years of blood. The ruthless Grand Duke Orso is locked in a vicious struggle with the squabbling League of Eight, and between them they have bled the land white. While armies march, heads roll and cities burn, and behind the scenes bankers, priests and older, darker powers play a deadly game to choose who will be king. War may be hell but for Monza Murcatto, the Snake of Talins, the most feared and famous mercenary in Duke Orso's employ, it's a damn good way of making money too. Her victories have made her popular ?? a shade too popular for her employer's taste. Betrayed, thrown down a mountain and left for dead, Murcatto's reward is a broken body and a burning hunger for vengeance. Whatever the cost, seven men must die. Her allies include Styria's least reliable drunkard, Styria's most treacherous poisoner, a mass-murderer obsessed with numbers and a Northman who just wants to do the right thing. Her enemies number the better half of the nation. And that's all before the most dangerous man in the world is dispatched to hunt her down and finish the job Duke Orso started. No s'han trobat descripcions de biblioteca. |
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Google Books — S'està carregant… GèneresClassificació Decimal de Dewey (DDC)823.92Literature English English fiction Modern Period 2000-LCC (Clas. Bibl. Congrés EUA)ValoracióMitjana:
Ets tu?Fes-te Autor del LibraryThing. |
il Nordico Brivido,
la Pratica Vitali,
il Mercenario Cosca
e l'adepto dagli occhi diversi Yori mastro Zolfo,
tutti coinvolti nella vendetta di Monzcarro Murcatto detta Monza ( )