A review by kiiouex
The Cold Commands, by Richard K. Morgan
2.0
Oh no, this crossed a line.
I feel like Gritty, Grimdark books are always rewarded for being unpleasant and bigoted; like they're telling some truer, realer story, and coarseness is obviously the only way to achieve that. That readers ought to push through their discomfort in the pursuit of High Art.
This! Is! Horseshit!
This book is everything offputting about the last one, and with nothing good to offset it. The last one had rape as wallpaper; this one has rape as character development for the rapist. Fuck that. Someone read the definition of antihero, said 'hold my beer', and leapt straight through to repulsive. Normally queer goes along with some amount of feminist, but this one just comes off as homophobic, sexist, just nasty.
It's incessant. It's pervasive. "chasing some piece of pussy" "maybe some other willowy slave gash would be grateful" cheap blowjobs, women walking around naked, constant sex and violence against women, the entire character of Ishgrim who exists to be ogled, and perhaps someone thought it very progressive to have a female character ogle the young slave woman as well as the males, endless references to jumping slaves, 'the cheap whore couldn't have been older than fourteen' just - fucking - stop
Oh and I was skimming other reviews and someone pointed out how Islamophobic it is as well, which I'd missed earlier on but by the end, yes, is not subtle.
The worldbuilding is great. The prose is largely beautiful, there are some great one liners and thoughts. And the world and the story that have been built and so luridly described is desperately ugly, in service of a meandering, pointless story. No one needs this.
(If you don't care about any of the above, the book is also completely fucking directionless, all three protagonists muddling around doing nothing, looking for a quest, in a plot so flat not even constant PoV shifts can hide it. Middle book syndrome to the extreme, and it reveals how extremely pointless Egar was, if you forgot that from the last one. It is never explained why the three main characters are such good friends to stick their necks out for each other to this extent, but the book ends up hinging on that. It's very weak.)
plus literal deus ex machina has to keep bailing the main character out of trouble, multiple times
I'm angry that male authors can write this sort of book, with grand gestures, no story, and an avalanche-of-brutality and get lauded as brave. And as a reader who picked this up for the LGBT tag, I feel pretty bait and switched.
I would suggest 'the stone in the skull' as a similar book that is not awful
I feel like Gritty, Grimdark books are always rewarded for being unpleasant and bigoted; like they're telling some truer, realer story, and coarseness is obviously the only way to achieve that. That readers ought to push through their discomfort in the pursuit of High Art.
This! Is! Horseshit!
This book is everything offputting about the last one, and with nothing good to offset it. The last one had rape as wallpaper; this one has rape as character development for the rapist. Fuck that. Someone read the definition of antihero, said 'hold my beer', and leapt straight through to repulsive. Normally queer goes along with some amount of feminist, but this one just comes off as homophobic, sexist, just nasty.
It's incessant. It's pervasive. "chasing some piece of pussy" "maybe some other willowy slave gash would be grateful" cheap blowjobs, women walking around naked, constant sex and violence against women, the entire character of Ishgrim who exists to be ogled, and perhaps someone thought it very progressive to have a female character ogle the young slave woman as well as the males, endless references to jumping slaves, 'the cheap whore couldn't have been older than fourteen' just - fucking - stop
Oh and I was skimming other reviews and someone pointed out how Islamophobic it is as well, which I'd missed earlier on but by the end, yes, is not subtle.
The worldbuilding is great. The prose is largely beautiful, there are some great one liners and thoughts. And the world and the story that have been built and so luridly described is desperately ugly, in service of a meandering, pointless story. No one needs this.
(If you don't care about any of the above, the book is also completely fucking directionless, all three protagonists muddling around doing nothing, looking for a quest, in a plot so flat not even constant PoV shifts can hide it. Middle book syndrome to the extreme, and it reveals how extremely pointless Egar was, if you forgot that from the last one. It is never explained why the three main characters are such good friends to stick their necks out for each other to this extent, but the book ends up hinging on that. It's very weak.)
plus literal deus ex machina has to keep bailing the main character out of trouble, multiple times
I'm angry that male authors can write this sort of book, with grand gestures, no story, and an avalanche-of-brutality and get lauded as brave. And as a reader who picked this up for the LGBT tag, I feel pretty bait and switched.
I would suggest 'the stone in the skull' as a similar book that is not awful