King of Thorns by Mark Lawrence
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
So, I was a little harsh on Prince of Thorns.
Having read king of thorns, I'm not so sure it deserved it. I think perhaps Mark Lawrence willfully sacrifidcd
a satisfying ending to his debut novel to bolster the theme of his trilogy. In which case Mark Lawrence has a scary
degree of talent, and I would advise against ever playing poker against him.
Because where Prince of Thorns was about free will and determination, King of Thorns is about acknowledging your
position in the world and all of the things both within your control and out that got you where you are.* And that,
I suspect, is leading us to a much interesting (and perhaps profound) conclusion than I had previously thought.
Regardless of the deeper themes (I suspect we'll need to wait until Emperor of thorns comes out to really see
what he's up to), Mark Lawrence is a tremendously talenter writer. The structure of this book is a literary feat
to behold, juggling four parallel plotlines separated across years of book time and making everything readable and interesting
and entertaining.
None of the individual scenes in King of Thorns** is quite as awesome as the best of Prince of Thorns but the
overall plot hangs together much better. More of the characters get fuller development, and I'm very excited to see
what happens to the survivors in the next book.*** Finally, threats and villains abound , and most of them remain undealt with.
I am giddy with excited for the conclusion of the trilogy and anything else Mark Lawrence has up his sleeve for the future.
*Or maybe i'm overthinking it again.
** {Possible Spoiler Alert} and i'm not quite sure the author did the math on some of them. Does anyone know how much heat is required to melt an ice lake? I'm thinking it's a lot more than someone could be within close proximity of, and survive.
*** On the other hand did we really need both monographs about the world AND paragraphs about Jorg's brothers. While the latter did a great job of adding depth to the first novel's too-many characters,
in this book they just feel superfluous.
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