Puck's Reviews > Half a War

"Mother War has arrived, and she will cast the whole Shattered Sea into darkness." A dark forecast, but sadly enough this series finale is quite a letdown.

Bleh, what a disappointing end to such an epic series. I loved “Half a King”, I thought the second book was great, and I hoped that this tome would deliver an exciting, action-packed, bloody finale. I was proven wrong. So WRONG! It was even so bad that reading the last 100 pages became a real struggle because this story let me down on so many levels.

Where do I even start…

Let’s begin with making something clear: according to the publication dates, there are apparently only four months between the second book and the third one. FOUR MONTHS: WTF! That's crazy! That's a recipe for a disastrous book; and that's what this book is because the story feels rushed, it lacks suspense, and it is written without much care for its old & new characters.
Old favorites like Father Yarvi, King Uthil, Grom-gil-Gorm, and warrior-queen Thorn are still there but have to stand aside to let three new characters experience the dangers of the Shattered Sea-War.

This War stands at the center of this story. In the previous two books we build up to this big and final battle, and with the ruthless Father Yarvi as the ringleader, you know any wicked scheme can happen. Therefore this book is filled with mayhem, bloody combat and death, brought by people with a grey moral. Sacrifices are made, friends are stabbed in the back, and revenge is served ice-cold. “Trust is like glass. Lovely, but only a fool rests lots of weight on it.”

Well spoken words, although Abercrombie never has a problem with writing epic action scenes and cutting lines. Yet I found the battles lacking in energy and suspense. After reading for the 10th time about heads being cut-off and blood soaked battlegrounds, things lose their edge. I was never surprised by an unconventional strategy and could usually guess how things would end. And Bad Guy Bright Yilling could never compare with Shadikshirram’s level of evilness.

But the reason for this ‘dull’ war is mainly because we experience it through the P.O.V.’s of three characters that I never grew to care for. There is Koll, the wood-carver from Half a World who has become Father Yarvi’s apprentice. Skara is the young princess of Throvenland who has to make political deals with King Uthil and Gorm to keep her country safe, and the third person is Raith, a cold, brutish man, sword bearer for Gorm and who warily becomes Skara’s bodyguard.
Out of these three I only cared for Skara because her character went through some growth and she played the "Game of Thrones" well. Raith and Koll only bored me: both boys aren’t fleshed out at all, they never get any character-development, and so they stay stuck in their roles of ‘cold-warrior-with-a-kind-heart’ and ‘good-boy-living-in-an-evil-world.’

Another big complaint I have with these characters is how romance plays such a big role in their storylines. Abercrombie is a good epic-fantasy writer, but he doesn’t write love-stories very well. In Half a World the cliché romance between Thorn and Brand made me roll my eyes a lot, but those two at least had their priorities straight. But these teens? Come on guys: we don’t have time to make-out, there are battles to be fought and people to kill!

I could also go for a while about the giant mess that was the finale (wherein Yarvi becomes a childish asshole and the cunning plots get ridiculous), but I’m done. Half a War was an okay book to read and it was nice to see the clash between Father Yarvi and Grandmother Wexen come to an end, but the predictable battles and the lifeless characters sucked out a lot of my reading-joy.

Readers: Stick to the first two books of this series – which are awesome and truly epic - but leave this 500+ pages monster lying on the shelf. You aren’t missing out on much.



Read here my other reviews of the Shattered Sea trilogy:
#1 Half a King| #2 Half a World