With the emergence of any cultural phenomenon, there is the
natural, human inclination to develop it as much as possible. (In the publishing world, ‘develop’ often
becomes ‘milk’.) One of the easiest, most
natural, and most obvious iterations is to go extreme—to take to the limit
whatever key ingredients made the phenomenon a success to begin with. Rock-n-roll began innocently enough, but one
branch of that tree has become the cavernous, guttural death metal. Blue jeans were once a workman’s clothing, yet
now are a highly commoditized (sometimes shockgun blasted, sometimes acid
soaked, sometimes intentionally frayed) article of high fashion. Thus, when readers and writers of epic
fantasy with gritty operatic undertones finally got together and agreed
‘grimdark’ had emerged as a thing, it was only natural that some of the next
gen of writers tried to evolve it to the max.
Mark Lawrence’s 2011 The Prince of
Thorns is that cavernous, shotgun-blasted extreme.
That intro perhaps longer than my actual ‘review’, The Prince of Thorns is an ambitious
work of epic fantasy only in that it attempts to push upon the reader the most
malevolent anti-hero possible, which, given the familiarity of everything else
in the novel, comes across as a gimmick.
The most violent acts of dishonor and disloyalty committed in the name
of daddy issues/victimhood, Lawrence says “Pshaw,
so that’s grimdark, eh? I’ll show you G.R.I.M.D.A.R.K.” and throws an
uber-Machievellian, sadomasochistic, megalomaniacal teen killer male the
reader’s way. Everything else about the
novel rendered in standard epic fantasy form (Medieval-ish setting, sword fights,
random bits of magic, monsters, massive battles, yawn…), the novel makes its
mark only in that it is essentially a never ending parade of antipathetic
scenes. Little to no character
development or emotional depth, bog-standard action scenes, and a whole world of
take-that characterize the remainder.
Lawrence’s prose is clean, quite readable, and retains tight focus, but it
struggles to keep afloat what seems reaction to the larger epic fantasy
cultural phenomenon rather than any story with substance or depth.
I guess we now await the appearance of G!R!I!M!D!A!R!K!, with
little flames dancing above the letters...
This is a deeply stupid "review".
ReplyDeleteThanks for listing so many reasons why my review is deeply stupid. You've really given us some good material for discussion! The only question is where to start...
DeleteYour review was fairly disappointing to read. It seems as though you read or heard someone(thing) calling this (shudder*cough-grimlark-cough*hack/I really loath that word) and then when reading (*skimming?) it colored the book front to back.
ReplyDeleteThe writing itself is, as you said, 'tight and focused' but also it is lyrical,engaging, and he actually has a setting that I confess is a weakness of mine, the far,far future earth, which seems as an amalgamation of A Canticle for Leibowitz, Swanwick's Darger & Sirplus setting and Vance's 'Dying Earth', along with the protagonist from A Clockwork Orange. The first book in the series is the roughest one, I cannot deny that, but your review..it almost seems as though you didn't even read it. I can assure you that GRINLARK was not his goal when writing these (or any of his other) books. He is a much better writer than that and I think that you should re-read the book, or even better, read all three as one book and leave the genre tags to the book shelvers and marketing kooks. If you truly think the book(s) are awful you should at least re-write the review. Your a better writer than that and so is Mr. Lawrence.
p.s. this was written after a night out, I apologize for errors, bad grammar and terrible sentence structure, etc,etc...