Surprisingly, I'm currently being entertained by Joe Abercrombie's The First Law Trilogy.
Already done reading The Blade Itself (and dumped Inside Straight and Avengers vs X-men in the process) and am now hitting the second book of the series. And despite reading online that the second book pales in comparison with the first and last books, I find the progress of the book quite just right as the second book, no doubt, acts as the bridge between the beginning and the ending.
I was a bit hesitant to pick up this series, no thanks to online readings of its supposed grittiness, goriness and grimness. But after reading The Blade Itself (TBI from hereon), I think A Song of Ice and Fire is more gritty, more gory, and more grim. If I were to compare, I would place TBI at par with Brent Weeks' Night Angel trilogy.
What powers this series is the depth of the characters and how Abercrombie allows these characters to unfold as the story itself unfolds. Abercrombie's characters are not one-dimensional types who are either good or bad, or black or white. All his characters from Logen, to Glokta, to the Dogman, to Bayaz the First of the Magi, to Jezal, and even to boy-next-door Collem West, are gray. They have good sides and they have bad sides -- they show to the readers they're humans, real breathing humans.
And the story itself unfolds quite nicely, if not a bit slowly, compared to, say, Kevin J. Anderson's Terra Incognita which in three books was quite fast-paced as if the author was stepping on the gas pedal hard with this story-telling. I guess this is the payoff for character-development, a slow unfurling of the storyline. But for me, this was nicely done -- not dragging, not boring. Just right.
TBI got me hooked that I decided to shelf first reading the Wild Cards book Inside Straight (will tackle that next time) and indefinitely put on hiatus Avengers vs X-men, which to me, seemed to be something of a silly plotline of a comics.
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A few days ago, I just realized that it had been some time since I've bought a book. So, I opened up my file of book purchases and indeed, the entire month of March passed by with me buying nada. I know I was visiting the bookstores last month but unfortunately no book got my interest.
This month though, I already have purchased two books -- Carlos Ruiz Zafon's The Prisoner of Heaven, and a Glen Cook omnibus of his otherworldly detective Introducing Garrett, P.I. (collecting the detective's three first novels I believe), which I bought at bargain at Book Sale - Makati Cinema Square for P75 -- that's 3 books for an outrageous bargain price. And what's nicer about it is this omnibus edition is the soft paperback edition, not the mass market one :P
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By next month, the inevitables is happening ... we're moving to San Pedro, Laguna and we're getting a dog!
Happy weekend, folks!
