What We’re Reading: Half a King (Shattered Sea #1)

CM: With Half a King, Joe Abercrombie makes his first foray into fantasy fiction aimed at a younger audience. As the first in his ‘Shattered Sea’ trilogy it establishes a world both broad in scope and yet intimately focused on the plight the protagonist, Yarvi.

If anything with ‘YA’ in front of it makes you sigh with the expectation of teen angst, Half a King may surprise you. Abercrombie maintains his hallmark dark, gritty style and there’s plenty of his familiar cynicism. Yarvi is a boy who should never have become king. With a deformed hand and a cowardly nature, he commands no respect from his people or even from his own mother. Yet when both his father and brother die he’s thrust unwillingly to the throne.

It isn’t until he’s betrayed and left for dead himself that Yarvi musters the courage and the will to take back what’s his. Just to survive he must put away scruples and niceties. Yarvi is hardly a role model, yet it’s the moral ambiguity that makes him such an interesting character to read.

One issue with the book is that it labours too hard in the first parts to establish Yarvi as cowardly and weak. The whole ‘show don’t tell’ mantra might have been a little better applied. But, given the quick pace of the book’s first few chapters, it’s forgivable that Abercrombie worked a little too hard to establish his character, in case it might be missed.

Abercrombie continues the series with Half the World, with the third in the series, Half a War, due out mid-year.

Whether it’s called YA or not, Half a King is worth a read if you like fantasy fiction that rejects the tired good vs. evil trope. This book is about that space halfway between the two.