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A review by sashas_books
Evil for Evil by K.J. Parker
4.0
I am still not sure whether it was an enjoyable read or not. I like K. J. Parker's writing, the world he has created, the cynicism and dark humour. The latter is absent from the second volume of this trilogy, unfortunately, just like from the first. And I do want a bit of sarcasm, I do want at least a little bit of dark humour in my dark fantasy... Here it's just grimdark, grimdark, grimdark, all the way to the last page (and there is a lot of pages here).
What I enjoyed though:
- Plots within plots within plots within plots and some unexpected developments. (You do need to suspend disbelief when Z is being so very clever all the time.)
- Geekery: more engineering, metallurgy, mining, porcelain-making (of all things ;-)), and falconry.
- The characters are great, even the very minor ones.
One more thing about the characters:
Z was scary in the first book, in this one he keeps getting scarier and scarier and scarier... AND THIS GOES FOR ALL THE OTHER IMPORTANT CHARACTERS FROM THE FIRST BOOK. This was rather difficult for me to stomach. Not that K. J. Parker's other books are full of lovely, kind, sympathetic people - they most definitely aren't, and this is not why I keep reading his work. It's just that there was too much darkness here - imho.
Obviously, I'll be reading the third book. I want to see the resolution.
What I enjoyed though:
- Plots within plots within plots within plots and some unexpected developments. (You do need to suspend disbelief when Z is being so very clever all the time.)
- Geekery: more engineering, metallurgy, mining, porcelain-making (of all things ;-)), and falconry.
- The characters are great, even the very minor ones.
One more thing about the characters:
Z was scary in the first book, in this one he keeps getting scarier and scarier and scarier... AND THIS GOES FOR ALL THE OTHER IMPORTANT CHARACTERS FROM THE FIRST BOOK. This was rather difficult for me to stomach. Not that K. J. Parker's other books are full of lovely, kind, sympathetic people - they most definitely aren't, and this is not why I keep reading his work. It's just that there was too much darkness here - imho.
Obviously, I'll be reading the third book. I want to see the resolution.