A little hatred by Joe Abercrombie
Book information
A little hatred by Joe Abercrombie, book one in Age of Madness series.
Published first on the 17th of September 2019 by Orbit.
5 stars out of 5
A familiar place, being back in this violent and unfair world, with unique characters, unique plans within plans and a director trying to get everything sorted the way that he wants it to be.
There are old and new characters
While I do not want to spoil anything for you, there are a few characters that we left in the first six books and they are glorious
There are a few new characters with a few outstanding new appearances
A few highlights
Women are capable strong and powerful here,
Savine, the genius running the industry;
May is also fascinating and I am hoping to see more of her in the next instalments.
Rikke with her long eye ability and her coach and mentor Isern;
Teufel in her infiltrator role and her very disturbing background story.
Men are still essential to this story:
Cocky men, such as Leo dan Brock is the perfect example of poor ideas in a testosterone fuelled brain; and Stour Nightfall, wanting to achieve fame and power using shortcuts or his sword. They are respectively the Young Lion and the Great Wolf;
Clever men, like Gunnar who is also down on his luck;
Lazy yet powerful men, like Orso; and Orso is even more interesting as he will take action to change and his world will come crushing down one step at a time and it is quite brutal to witness.
Magic is part of the story, in minimal part; yet there is a brand new addition to the story, the Long Eye.
The way this ability is described in the story is outstanding; predicting the future is hard enough and tying the description to physical objects felt refreshing!
That ending is outstanding. It promises a lot of the worst of The First Law
Tropes/themes that work for me
New setting (industrial revolution like time line) and old world (with the same large picture issues, such as the difficulties with the north and the south.
Revolution and rebellion are essential to the story and they are told in a compelling way.
Magic is barely present, as traditionally in the First law world, but there is more than we had in the past with the Long Eye.
While it is not a trope or a theme, I loved the name of the chapters; especially the ones where we experienced different people and different conversations, such as “fencing with father” and “drinks with mother”.
