 And I definitely talk about Abercrombie more than I talk about Neil Gaiman. The bones of what could be my absolute favorite thing still, but it's not very good in my opinion. Why isn't this good? I want to talk to him. So is the Shattered Sea by Joe Abercrombie any good? No. It is not bad, but it's not very good in my opinion. We're just gonna chat about that today. It's a series review. I will keep it, I'll keep it non-spoiler up until the very end and then there's a spoilery thing that I want to talk about that in my opinion might improve your experience if you know it before you read it because I learned it in the midst of reading it and it did increase my enjoyment a bit knowing it even though that was technically a spoiler. So I don't want to like force that on you so I will talk about that at the very end so you can skip it or like not hear it if you don't want to. The Shattered Sea by Joe Abercrombie is his YA series that is a viking inspired YA series. Lord Grimdark one of if not my favorite author because officially my favorite author is Neil Gaiman but if not my favorite author one of my absolute favorite authors like I get I mean honestly like Neil Gaiman and then immediately below that is Joe Abercrombie and I definitely talk about Abercrombie more than I talk about Neil Gaiman. When I first learned that Joe Abercrombie had written about Vikings I was like that is destined to be my favorite thing on the planet and then it definitely wasn't. So I read Half a King quite some time ago it was actually Bethany's first Abercrombie and like at the time she hadn't read any first lot it was her first Abercrombie and she was like worried about having to tell me that she didn't think it was very good because I had hyped Abercrombie so much and I was like this isn't it like the Abercrombie that I've hyped to you he's not here she was like oh thank goodness because like oh like oh I love really good way you think it's that good and I was like I don't so I had heard that the second and third books are better and also they don't follow the same character anymore they follow it's it's like tangentially connected but it's not like a direct sequel in the same way where you keep following the same character and so having heard both of those things I was like well maybe the first one is like not that great but like maybe gets better from there so then I reread Half a King because it had been a while and I was like yes still not good and then I finally got around to reading Half the World also these covers are gorgeous but Half the World and Half a War and they're just they're so painfully adequate that it truly hurts because it's not they're not bad like they're not they're nothing that I can rant about really there's nothing in it that I'm like why would you do this or like this is so stupid or I can't like it's very cathartic to rant about books it can't rant about these they're they're all three stars I read Half a King when I reread it I was like yes still three stars but like I'm hopeful and excited to get maybe you know some four stars in here and Half the World you know for a minute there I was like this might be edging toward a four and then it just like fumbles the landing and I was like that's a three okay but Half a War could could do it and no it eaked out a three there were each of the in each of these books there were things about them that I thought were very very good and there were things about them that were like I could see Abercrombie like peeking through I was like there you are that's it right there yeah yeah more of that but I just I really like I want to talk to him and I don't mean another interview because like because that would be weird and uncomfortable but um like if I could just like I mean in my perfect world I would not have interviewed him my perfect world I would have had a pint with him for like 10 hours I just like picked his brain you know casually one on one not like worrying about promoting anything or like not saying anything that's like not cool to say like I just you know I just don't like talk to him so like if he and I were like friends and we were like at the place where like I could be like hey my dude we're besties so don't take this the wrong way but like what the fuck I mean I wouldn't say that but like what I would truly like to ask him if I had the opportunity and um or we were you know we were chill like that to be like did you think that because it was YA then similarly to how like the kids menu has like no spices and like no flavor because kids can't handle it which I disagree with I wasn't allowed to eat off the kids menu as a kid I was just fine so like it feels like an utterly devoid of the like tantalizing tangy spicy flavors that first law is just overflowing with this is like only salt and pepper and not very much of salt or pepper and I just I because I I don't know for a fact that he thought that that's why this is like this maybe he just wasn't inspired to write anything that interesting here but it feels like there are so many things in these books where like if you had just made this longer if you had really leaned into this if you had chosen to really kind of like make this messy and complicated and like go there with it if you had written this for adults or at least I don't think you need to have written this for adults I think that we need Abercrombie to be in the mindset that he's in when he writes for adults because it feels to me like his mindset here is like okay like this could be interesting but every time I'm like leaning towards making it interesting I have to like subdue that impulse because this is for the children you know what I mean and it's such a tragedy to me that's why it's so painful to read this because like this could be so good there is like the bones of the masterpiece here the bones of what could be my absolute favorite thing still but it's written so like lacklusterly that feels like oh okay so this is like the kids version you know and it's I think it's unfair if that was the mindset because I don't think you have to pull your punches like that you do have to write a little bit differently for a YA audience you can't write first law for YA like no but you do not have to utterly strip back anything of depth interest nuance or darkness and and that said there is quite a bit of violence there's quite a bit of dark things in here but there's just like I mean that's just the pepper if that makes sense like like black pepper not like you know habanero peppers or those peppers so it feels like he thought that you had to keep it kind of one note and blah like you can have some dark stuff but like nothing too dark nothing too interesting in its darkness because you know you can't make kids think that dark things are interesting and oddly enough the main character in half a king who ends that he's still a character in the other two books he's just not your pov character he became such a more interesting character as the books went on because like he became this like interesting and wild card enigmatic little finger type character that you didn't know what his deal was because he was no longer your pov character he was so boring to me to read about in half a king but by half a war I was like man I really love a book about yarvi and then I was like well I have a book about yarvi and it wasn't good but now he's very interesting to me um and it was like things like that or I was like we're seeing glimmers of like the types of character work that he's able to do that he's so good at doing that he's just like choosing not to do here for some reason and that's the only explanation I can think of is that he thought he that he can't or that he thinks he has to pull back for YA and I'm like you don't though like a little bit like a tiny bit it's more just like kind of how you frame it things like that but like I've read plenty of YA that like really goes further than this this is a bit older so maybe that's like a newer idea in YA but I mean like Dread Nation by Justina Ireland even Six of Crows by Lee Bardugo Madness so Discrete by Mania McGinnis there's some quite dark YA books like if he was if he thought that he had to pull punches like this for YA then I wish he'd just written a viking trilogy for adults instead I don't think it had to be like this for YA but since he seems to think it has to be like this for YA I wish he hadn't written it as YA then if that's what it takes for him to write something interesting is to write it for adults then then write it for adults please sir I'm gonna put these down they're heavy yeah and like when I think about that that's why I thought going back to reading these books that I was like maybe I'm remembering it like that they were maybe because I was like expecting first law but like no I'll lower my expectations maybe I'll have a good time with it and I felt the exact same way reading it half a king the second time and then continue to feel that way reading half a war or half the world and half a war where again like in concept there's a lot of things that's why I say there's a bones of a good story here because in concept the world that he is showing us the types of world-building he's doing the setup like the the situation our characters are in is a fascinating situation that could it is ripe for an interesting examination of motivation and conflict and political maneuvering and then it just like doesn't actually like it's like when you order something on a menu it sounds like it should be the most tasty thing ever and you get it and you're like I don't know why this isn't good because like all I know what's in it because it's all listed on the menu but it's just it's just not good I don't really know why it's if I'm sorry if you like Q-dobo and if you don't know what Q-dobo is it's like Chipotle except shitty and it's wild to me the first time that I went to a Q-dobo because someone told me oh it's not good and I was like I'm looking at it and it looks like exactly the same thing that I get at Chipotle how hard is it to mess that up it's all the same ingredients like it's like a subway like you can see what's going in it you can see what the salsa looks like you can see what the meat looks like you can see what it all looks like and I was like this looks like a carbon copy of Chipotle and Chipotle is pretty good so I was like how bad could that be and I I looked at them make it and I knew what was in it and I've had Chipotle before and I got my food from Q-dobo and I was like how is this not good how did you mess this up and that's why I feel about the ingredients and execution of the Shattered Sea where I'm like I know what's in this I remember what's in this and I know what's in it while I'm reading it why isn't this good why isn't this interesting because like if I'm if I was to describe this situation that sounds interesting and yet it's not it's just wild to me when I'm experiencing that when I'm like just absolutely baffled as to like usually I'm pretty good at pinpointing why something doesn't work for me and here the only thing that really I can point to is just like a lack of spice I don't know how else to say it and I did we did uh the first book as a patron buddy read so I did kind of talk about it with my patrons half uh half a king so we kind of diagnosed it a little bit and just sort of how individual it's it's kind of hard it's hard to diagnose overall as a whole it's easier to diagnose specific situations that are in the books where like see now if this situation had been allowed to develop over a longer period of time and if this particular dynamic we had been allowed to see it like kind of grow into this thing in this way as opposed to like learning about it immediately or things like that where I'm like all these little tweaks throughout were like if this had been presented like this or if this had taken a little longer or if this had been given time to be a mystery or like all these little things along the way that like as a insinuation would come out to be a better story experience it wasn't like any one problem all of the time there was just so many things like that where I was like why didn't why did you waste this like why you presented a thing where like you could have actually done something with that and made it interesting and instead you were just like nope I'm just gonna throw it in there like you could have caramelized the onions but instead you like chuck it in raw and I'm like but for why and then in half uh half the world the second one the like I thought it might be a four it was a little more interesting and it was doing a little more things where I was like now that's more like it and YRV was suddenly a much more interesting character than he was when he was our POV so I was like okay okay and then it did one of the most YA things that I've ever read in any YA book in my life and I was like sir Abercrombie you wrote this are you kidding me so I was just so aggravated by that I was like no and then the third one the third one I think that the ending was actually kind of the best part of it but it did me and or a lot to get there and had still the same problems of like things not given the room to breathe enough not allowed to be as complicatedly nuanced as they could be not giving us enough insight into how messy the motivations of the characters would probably be in the situation just kind of glossing over it and I was just like why why this could be so good okay and the last thing that I want to talk about is the spoilery thing so before I talk about spoilers I just want to say if you're interested in the Shattered Sea I wouldn't say don't read it but if you're interested in Abercrombie um and like you don't know where to start and you're like maybe I'll ease in with Shattered Sea instead of going straight for first law don't if you want peak Abercrombie if you want to see why he's hyped then read first law because that's where he is that's the Abercrombie that we're all talking about Shattered Sea like I don't know who this is what is this but if you've already read first law or like you're already into Abercrombie or whatever and you're interested in the Shattered Sea it's not bad it's by no means bad it's it's very like fine and that's what's so tragic about it because like I know this author's capable of greatness and there's the seeds for a great story that Abercrombie could write the shit out of and for some reason he didn't like if you want to read them read them they are not bad books by any stretch if we're looking at like who do which books to give to kids these are YA books so like if it's a younger audience we're talking about then like sure then don't start with first law you could start with Shattered Sea because that's the age they're geared towards and I don't know maybe if I had read them when I was the age they're geared towards if I was like 13 or 14 or whatever oh is that way 15 I don't know how I'm supposed to be from Hawaii but like I might have liked them more I don't know it's hard to say but they're not bad they are by no means bad they're just painfully adequate so again if you're interested in them you know give it a go but don't don't expect too much especially if you're coming off a first law don't expect first law and if you've never read first law and you won't try Abercrombie don't don't reach out to see read read first law so anyway the spoilery thing so this is your final warning I'm gonna talk about a spoiler that I again I think it's worth knowing it before you read the books because it helped me to be more interested in this and is an example of like this there is some interesting stuff here that like you just like didn't do anything with it anyway so final final warning this is spoilery for the Shattered Sea if you don't want to know any spoilers about Shattered Sea then bye so the Shattered Sea it comes across or like is presented to you as probably a fantasy world it's not it doesn't really written like historical fiction because like we know what history we do know of the Vikings like this isn't it this isn't based on a like North saga but it is very viking inspired the world so you're like okay so it's a fantasy world inspired by Vikings like cool I've seen that they have like a shattering that they refer to hence the Shattered Sea where like God was like shattered into all these like different gods and so then you end up with this sort of like pantheon which is again reminiscent of the North Pantheon and you know just the way they live you know they they raid on ships and it's quite old medievalish vibes so again all of that great viking vibes I'm assuming this is a fantasy world it's not it's not a fantasy world there isn't actually any magic in these books which like reading Abercrombie isn't necessarily a red flag isn't necessarily something you're like oh there's no magic in these books what's going on because first law barely has magic in it so what it is is a dystopian far future where we had a nuclear event and that is the Shattering the Shattered Sea like the Great Shattering is a nuclear event and there are parts of the world that like people don't go to because they are cursed and that's like the vernacular that is used to describe it because that's how they would talk about it but in fact those are like nuclear fallout zones where like you are cursed because you are poisoned by the radiation that is still there so people like don't have that knowledge anymore but that's what's going on it is not like gods and curses it is nuclear fallout which is that's very interesting and they talk about like artifacts of like the elves of the olden days which is like they talk about it the way we talk about like in like Lord of the Rings or something some like elven weapon of great power that is like mystical and mysterious but in fact is you know weapons technology of our day is a gun is things like that that are like oh this artifact of the elves is a gun they don't know how to make those anymore so it's a magical weapon as far as they're concerned so that is that's great that's fantastic that's so interesting if he had written an adult trilogy that's my king inspired but is in fact a far future that is post nuclear apocalypse like that's amazing that sounds like my favorite thing ever um and then it's just so so lackluster once i knew that because you don't find that out for quite some time in the books so once i since i already knew it because i had that spoiler then it's fun to start to see those things instead of having to wait to go and reread it once you learn that you can know that going into it and start looking for the signs of it already and pay attention to how they talk about artifacts and gods and curses and things like that and look for those things because it is interesting when you know that and how it's being referred to and how it can work both ways it's it's just a tragic to me because like again so many good ideas and there's i genuinely good political situations political machinations character messy motivations that it's just not explored enough it's not dived into enough and that's why makes me so sad because i could be so gone i really want to like commission him to like do it again but do it right anyway um if you made it this far let me know the comments down below your thoughts and feelings about the shattert see if you've read them if you want to read them if you plan to read them if i've convinced you to read them or to not read them or whatever let me know i post videos on saturdays other random times well definitely saturdays so i can subscribe join my patreon if you feel so inclined and i'll see you