Prince of Thorns by Mark Lawrence
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
No. No, no, no, no, no! You can not write a book about self-determination and the philosophy of choices, and end it with a Deus Ex Machina! It compromises all of your hard work and makes the reader think that you don't actually care what your book is saying.
And, right up until the very end of the novel, I was pretty sure the author did care.
But first let me give some context. In the fantasy novel forum and blog circle, this book was trumpeted as dark dark fantasy; an experiment in how brutal and uncompromising a main character can be and still get the reader to care. Except it's not really.* As I alluded to in the first paragraph, it's really about the choices we make and the frameworks** we use for making choices, and how our values shape the choices we can make, and thus what we can do. And from page 146 to page 319 it's wildly successful, due to a very tight sychronicity between theme and plot, some quality world building, and some fantastic set pieces.
Unfortunately, as previously mentioned, it then completely falls apart at the end. One poor plot point trivializes the previous 150 pages of awesome. Or maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the point is that no matter what your philosophy is, life ultimately comes down to a coin toss. I don't think so, though. If so, why would the author have worked so hard earlier in the book to tell a story about free will?
So here's my recommendation: Get this book and read it! But stop at the end of chapter 46. Put down the book. Imagine that it had the completely awesome, internally consistent and self-validating ending it was supposed to have. And then hope like hell that the sequel that comes out in August lives up to the promise of its predecessor.
* Actually, the first half is supposed to be this, but frankly, after the main character casually rapes and murders some villagers*** (not graphically, thankfully) in opening pages, nothing he does in the rest of the book even causes a raised eyebrow.
** I think the author would say philosophies, but I mean something more structured than that.
*** Which made me want to sit the author down for a long talk with the wonderful Jim C. Hines (http://www.jimchines.com/blog/)
View all my reviews
