The Trouble with Peace by Joe AbercrombieMy rating: 2 of 5 stars
The trouble with peace is that it does not last. People sitting idly tend to get bored. The trouble with this book is that *I* was bored.
This had been my most anticipated book of the year and ended up almost being one of the few books I did not finish. The first tenth of the book is dreadfully boring. The first half is continually boring with one of two really short moments (pages) that I enjoyed. The second half does get better especially the last quarter of the book. Twenty-Five percent of a story does not make up for the shortfalls of the rest of it.
Joe Abercrombie is very much in right now. As he has been for years. The book is going to sell well and people will worship the ground he walks on and a certain YouTuber will sing it's glory and get tons of new followers for it and life will continue as it has been. Remember, just because someone likes or dislikes something doesn't mean its bad. Out of all the books from Abercrombie that I've read, this is my least favorite and I feel it is the weakest. Is it? That's up to you to decide. He's going to make bank on it either way.
I didn't feel a thrill while reading this. Abercrombie has an ability to put you on a rollercoaster ride from the comfort of your favorite chair but I was so bored I decided to stop reading at one point and watch The Greatest Showman instead which was another dreadfully awful thing to sit through. People paid to see that so my opinion may count for nothing in the world.
I noticed that A Little Hatred gets some flak for being centered on a new generation. The Trouble With Peace, as it's the continuation, plays into that hand real hard. I didn't mind the new characters the first time around but everyone in this book came across different. Only one character ended up being likable (Orso) even though I don't remember him standing out much in the last book. He comes into his own in this one. Savine, Leo, Stour, Broad, even Rikke... I didn't care for how their development changes them. Savine and Leo especially.
One chapter about Rikke's struggles with the Long Eye allowed Abercrombie to do some creative styling with the storytelling. I guess you can say it was a chapter reversed. At first, I thought this was interesting but as the chapter dragged on I grew disenchanted. I think this is when I took my Greatest Showman sabbatical. Ugh. But don't worry because the always included continuously-changing-point-of-view-from-secondhand-characters which has become Abercrombie's trademark is here in all its typical violent glory. For those not in the know, this is when a character is stabbed, and then we follow the person doing the stabbing, then they die somehow and we follow their killer, and it goes on like this until we shift from the killers to observers and then go back to normal. When I finally got to it here I had almost forgotten he did these types of chapters.
Fans of Best Served Cold will be happy to see many connections here including what I'll call a cameo from a certain husband and wife team. I was disappointed that one of them is repeatedly mentioned when they didn't show up again in a more pivotal role. The players in this book are strictly the characters we were introduced to last time. We also learn more about Clover, who he is, and an interesting tidbit of what made him famous. I also miss Glokta centered stories. I started daydreaming at one point that maybe Abercrombie will kill him with an epic send-off. The original cast has been dead or is dying out in this trilogy but he deserves a little fan service. I keep hoping that the Bloody Nine will return even after the events of Red Country. The best ending for this new trilogy I could think of would be both Logen and Ferro returning to, pardon my language, fuck shit up. If that shit happens to be Bayaz, even better.
Being a sequel in a series, specifically the middle book, you have to enhance the story of the original while leaving the reader wanting to get to the conclusion. For most of The Trouble With Peace the behavior of the cast was unreliable based on what I'd come to know of them previously and the main word I would use to describe the book is Wasted. The cast was wasted to tell a story of treason and betrayal that is expected, common, and unoriginal which are not words that I would normally use when Abercrombie is involved. I wanted more but got less. I had ambitious hopes but as mentioned above the only person I liked this time around was Orso. I'm not sure how Abercrombie plans to end the series and I'll read it for sure, but the days for idol worship of "Lord Grimdark" are over.
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