A Land Fit For Heroes

Richard Morgan, "The Cold Commands"

2014-02-10 · in Books, A Land Fit For Heroes · 126 words

Sequel to The Steel Remains, following the same cast. This is essentially bringing what I tend to think of as the William Gibson plot structure to dystopic fantasy, with a sprawl of largely-unrelated stories that converge on an appropriately epic ending. There's a lot of interesting complexity in this series' world, and some neat structural tricks in the writing that had me reading back to check details several times; this feels like it's a lot further into the story than just the second book. On the other hand, being a Richard Morgan book, this pulls no punches, and would be a deeply depressing (and, sometimes, disturbing) work — if it weren't so well-crafted.

The third volume's due this year. It's on my buy-immediately list already.

ISBN 0575084898.

Richard Morgan, "The Steel Remains"

2011-08-06 · in Books, A Land Fit For Heroes · 39 words

Richard Morgan does epic fantasy with his usual eye for what the characters would actually be like in practice. There are lots of quotable bits in this book, but none that are sufficiently PG-rated to include here...

ISBN 0575084812.