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A review by cupiscent
The Cold Commands by Richard K. Morgan
4.0
I do like books where you can formulate and discard theories on just what the hell is happening as you go along and further snippets of information are given to you. With the fact that half of Ringil's adventure in this book is done in metaphor (or, as he calls them, the Grey Places) it's extremely possible to theorise wildly at every turn. Which is good, because otherwise, I find his trekking through fantasyland slightly tedious.
This remains thoroughly interesting fantasy, partly because it's just so damn different. Morgan takes a gleeful, filthy cant on traditional fantasy, and he rolls around in mysterious world-building that includes so many elements you just don't often see in the genre (the state of the night sky remains one of the most compelling ongoing items in the worldbuilding for me). I've seen criticism of the patchiness of his plotting, and that's entirely justified, but I'm willing to run over the top of it for the black humour and the interesting development.
However, I am fumbling with certainty that hatched within me halfway through that this is probably not going to be a trilogy, given that I'm not sure we've even MET the true villains yet, and they haven't even set off on the quest they were planning for half the book.
Also, as a writer currently struggling with POV questions in my own work, I was somewhat bemused to see Morgan's careful system of POV rotation (previously Ringil-Egar-Ringil-Archeth-Ringil) fall down completely in the second half of the book. Did I care? Only inasmuch as Archeth kept getting left out. There's only so much wildly silly testosterone a girl can take.
This remains thoroughly interesting fantasy, partly because it's just so damn different. Morgan takes a gleeful, filthy cant on traditional fantasy, and he rolls around in mysterious world-building that includes so many elements you just don't often see in the genre (the state of the night sky remains one of the most compelling ongoing items in the worldbuilding for me). I've seen criticism of the patchiness of his plotting, and that's entirely justified, but I'm willing to run over the top of it for the black humour and the interesting development.
However, I am fumbling with certainty that hatched within me halfway through that this is probably not going to be a trilogy, given that I'm not sure we've even MET the true villains yet, and they haven't even set off on the quest they were planning for half the book.
Also, as a writer currently struggling with POV questions in my own work, I was somewhat bemused to see Morgan's careful system of POV rotation (previously Ringil-Egar-Ringil-Archeth-Ringil) fall down completely in the second half of the book. Did I care? Only inasmuch as Archeth kept getting left out. There's only so much wildly silly testosterone a girl can take.