Best Read Worst Read ’23

Twenty-twenty-three was a year of new authors for me. Despite receiving recommendations for the works of Joe Abercrombie, I hadn’t yet delved into his grimdark world. The second trilogy in the First Law series had languished in my Kindle library for ages. I tried Kazuo Ishiguro for the first–and probably the last–time. Robert Jordan drove me to the brink of despair with his rambling Wheel of Time series–which I abandoned after book six, and I delved heavily into Brandon Sanderson’s works with mixed feelings. It was not all gloom, though. I enjoyed In Solitude’s Shadow by David Green (review to follow), and Annie of Ainsworth Mill by Katie Hutton.

I also returned to some old favourites, like Dean Koontz, John Le Carré, John Wyndham, and C. S. Lewis. Oh, and how could I forget Clive Barker’s Abarat series or Terry Pratchett’s Discworld?

Ironically, my best read of ’23 came from the same author as my worst. I’ve never been so excited and deflated by the same writer. Typically, I will get excited and then cool off over time. I suspect the fact that I read eight of his books one after another didn’t help—and they were big books. However, it goes much deeper than that. It was as if the author grew tired of writing and slapped together an offering to meet his contractual obligations. But I digress…

Best Read of ’23

The book I most enjoyed in ’23 was The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie.

I suspect Abercrombie’s books would have remained languishing in my Kindle library, except I found Half a King on the shelf in my local café and read it avidly. At about the same time, when a talented Irish author, John De Búrca, gifted me the original trilogy in the First Law series for a big zero birthday, it hooked me.

I found his form of grimdark refreshingly new, and I thoroughly enjoyed the exploits of Logen, Jezal, and Glotka. Creative Writing 101 instructs us authors to make our characters human and multi-faceted rather than one-dimensional, which Abercrombie achieves in spades: Glotka with his aching leg, Yarvi (Half a King) with a withered hand, Logen with nine fingers and psychopathic tendencies, First of the Magi Bayaz with temper tantrums. With the First Law world, he created a place with no angels or demons, just characters with a mixture of the angelic and demonic, mainly with the demonic in the ascendancy.

Worst Read of ’23

Okay, and now for the irony. The book I enjoyed the least in ’23 was Red Country by Joe Abercrombie.

In fairness, I did get a hint that the author’s works could vary when I read Half a World. A lack of research turned me off—such as Thorn and Skifr training with a ship’s oar. In my youth, I rowed skulls with an oar over nine feet long and weighing about 12 pounds (they are lighter today)—wholly unwieldy at that length and weight. As such, I knew training with a ship’s oar, at least thirty feet long and weighing considerably more, would be pointless. Moving it would take Herculean effort, and avoiding it would be child’s play. When I see that type of error in any work, I wonder whether anyone edited the writing or, if done, by whom. Any editor worth the name would have spotted such glaring issues.

This brings me to Red Country, the last book in the second First Law world trilogy. The book is a thinly veiled plagiarism of The Searchers. Even the title is an insult to Native Americans. In Red Country, we have Ghosts rather than the Apache scalping settlers, but apart from the name—there is no difference—so Abercrombie has adopted a misrepresentation by Cowboy and Indian movie script writers as the premise for a story, essentially taking Holywood’s attempts to excuse genocide and turning them into a grimdark fantasy?

This racist plagiarism was not the only issue.

The author revived characters like Nicomo Cosca and Caul Shivers—who worked well in earlier novels—and destroyed them. Bringing Nine Fingers back from the dead was also a mistake, in my opinion. He should have died as an anti-hero jumping into a freezing river.

It is a real shame that I went from avid fan to “not for me ta” so quickly, but I don’t think I will be reading any more books by the author.

Those In-Betweeners

If I hadn’t edited The Music of Swords by John De Búrca, I would probably have listed it as my favourite read of ’23. It is a fantastically gritty retelling of Irish Celtic mythology, including High Fantasy and Grimdark elements.

As I already mentioned, I enjoyed In Solitudes Shadow by David Green and have just started the second book in the series, Path of War. I will be posting a review of In Solitudes Shadow in Hughes Reviews on Friday.