The Price of Spring (Long Price Quartet) Review

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(More customer reviews)I just finished the last of the books in Daniel Abraham's "Long Price Quartet" series, and I'm so sincerely impressed and excited about the series, I just wanted to give it a shout out here. The first book started a little slow but gradually pulled me in, and it just kept getting better until this last one; which is absolutely outstanding.
The last reviewer covered some of the plot details; and I don't want to inadvertantly slip in any spoilers, so let me just say this: I love it when sci-fi and fantasy writers go the extra mile with the depth and believability of their characters (sometimes the world-building or the magic system or the spaceship engines are meticulously detailed, and the actual people are cardboard cut-outs, you know what I mean?) and this guy went absolute extra light years! His people are such thoroughly real and unique individuals you feel like you've known them for years, and everything they think and feel and do is exactly what you would think and feel and do in their place.
I didn't realize how much that aspect of good story-telling was missing from some of the things I've read lately until I saw it done so well again here. All those tell-tale little details of characterization and world-building are present here in spades - too many to go into, but you get the idea.

And the guy has such a lyrical writing style! You know that first page of Patrick Rothfuss's book "The Name of the Wind", where all the author is doing is describing for paragraphs the exact nature of the silence around the inn that night, and you could just weep for the beauty of the language? Well, in Abraham's "The Price of Spring", practically the whole BOOK is written that gorgeously, and still the action never lets up.
OK. Enough fan-girl gushing! Thanks for listening; I think I'm done raving now! Just buy this series if you love a really good, really absorbing novel, fantasy genre or not. If I was as good a writer as Abraham, I could explain better why you'll thank me later - but just trust me, you will.


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The Heroes Review

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(More customer reviews)The Heroes embodies everything I like about the fantasy genre right now.
I was an English major once upon a time, and used to read plenty of serious literature. But as I've grown older, I have less patience for that kind of fiction. Writers of genre fiction, and fantasy in particular, haven't forgotten that great books are ultimately about great storytelling. It's about putting interesting characters in tight spots and seeing what happens. Everything else is secondary.
And The Heroes is a bloody great story. It's tightly focused on a single battle over a three-day period. The action is well done, but it's mainly the very flawed characters making good and bad decisions in desperate situations that make the story so entertaining. Each chapter has a point-of-view character, and the tone and style change, sometimes subtly, sometimes dramatically, as the story shifts between them. (The dialog and language of the northmen is just one example, and Abercrombie deliberately draws some humor out of this.) Each chapter reads like a well-honed short story, with a mini story arc for that particular character. I found each of the points of view interesting and entertaining -- there wasn't a single chapter where I found myself skimming to get to the next good bit, because every page is a pleasure.
There is a theme here (war sucks), but it's not heavy handed and adds some emotional depth to the story. I even had a tear in my eye at one point. But mostly the book struck me as honest, funny, touching, and vastly entertaining.


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