Reviews Elseweb: Prince of Thorns

[hawkwing_lb]

Tor.com has published my review of Mark Lawrence's Prince of Thorns.

Which is a dark brutal fantasy with a fourteen-year-old rapist/murderer protagonist.

Comments

[hawkwing_lb]

If I'm getting paid for a review, it's my job to be fair. Visceral as my dislike of it proved.

Women are nearly invisible in the book, but people are tortured and murdered left, right, top, bottom, up, down, charm, strange.

Lawrence has good writing chops, or I'd never have made it through - but GRRM is about as far into the Grim & Dark & Cynical end of the fantasy pool as I want to paddle for pleasure. Joe Abercrombie, maybe... But Lawrence is in R. Scott Bakker territory of the grotesque and the brutal.

Give me Scott Lynch or Mary Gentle or Elizabeth Bear or even Richard K. Morgan any day.