Reviews and Comments

The shtick of the insect-based cultures was uninteresting to me, the prose was workmanlike at best, and the theme of resisting a bad by nature culture was either conservative and reactionary, or the message was too subtle to be detected. Still, it gets a few marks for not being based around the hackneyed "farm / outsider boy / hobbit discovers he's a hero" trope. I find it hard to just drop books, particularly ones that are well regarded, so the combination of ill-health, and disinterest ensured that it took me ages to finish this one. I doubt I'll be tackling any of this series further.

For reasons I can't quite recall, I came into this expecting a weighty tome dealing with the moral consequences of strict law codes or the like. I'm not sure why, as Richard Swan seems to be associated with the "GrimDark" fantasy movement, one which I haven't really had any exposure to and to be honest the name gave me the shits. (I mean, Elric, Viriconium, even Gormenghast should be progenitors of this genre? I digress.)

At any rate, the book was lighter than I expected in terms of philosophy, though that was counterbalanced by some particularly gory passages which certainly added a different kind of weight. I find battle stuff in fantasy books pretty tiresome nowadays, but I thought this writing was quite decent as it emphasised the horror of violence and war, which many much fantasy writing tends to glorify.

The political and philosophical themes I found a bit slippery, perhaps as this is just the first in a series of books. I was hoping for a critique of the system of law that is presented, and there were elements of that in a "show don't tell" manner, but I expected a little more.

Other reviewers have mentioned a parallel with Judge Dredd, and while I agree, I find that Dredd's satire and social critique is more successful than this - at least so far. The book ends pointing to a story arc that may well go far further in this direction, or may not.

At any rate, I enjoyed the book. It got me through a very unpleasant week spent mostly in bed. I'm looking forward to the next one.

Note quite the weighty thoughtful tome I was expecting - not that it's without philosophical weight - but enjoyable nonetheless. Probably just what I needed as it's been a rough week.