the grey bastards [book review]

Another almost random read, The Grey Bastards by Jonathan French is a light (if gritty) fantasy book that should appeal to Warhammer players. Including the use of hogs as mounts. In that the main characters are half-orcs, in a Universe where lots of species (also found in Warhammer) co-exist, if not peacefully. The idea of reverting the usual perspective on orcs as dumb killers was already found in Stan Nicholls’ Orcs, which I found better than the current Grey Bastards, especially because there is not much to distinguish these from humans, sentiments included, apart from their appearance, but this makes for an enjoyable travel read. Since the characters are rather well-drawn, the story is rather (too?) simple and one can see where it is heading. (Some reviews commented on the Tolkien-meets-Sons-of-Anarchy aspect of the book, but as I have not watched the series…) There is at least one central weakness to the plot that I will not reveal, which first comes as a great shocker but is then later explained by a rather lame arm bending blackmail, that makes the story not as strong as it could have been. Upon finishing the book I found out that (a) there was a second book in the series about to appear and (b) it has won the 2016 Self-published fantasy blog-off prize, a prize started by Mark Lawrence (author of Red Sister) to “shine a light on self-published fantasy” which sounds like a great idea, in that it helps the authors towards commercial publishing. The jury is made of 10  fantasy bloggers going through a rather time-consuming process.

The Hobbit (a Smaug screen)

In what seems to become a X’mas tradition, I went back to see a Hobbit movie with my kids. (If not in a Norman theatre, which permitted us to hear the original soundtrack.) And once more, we came out of the movie theatre with different reactions. Both my son and I thought it was better than the (very boring) first instalment. My daughter did not buy the dragon part (which is indeed difficult to buy!) and complained about the lack of depth and of this feeling of history and tradition that should come with elves. I completely agree with her analysis on this second part. The movie is too centred on action scenes—the park-ridesque escape from the Halls of Thranduil and the pursuit by the orcs, themselves pursued by the elves Legolas and Tauriel are definitely lacking in subtlety!—to spend time on the history of the land, and on the reasons for the behaviour of the elves towards the dwarves, or on the past glory of Dale… The New-Zealand mountain landscapes are as beautiful as ever, but lack in bringing strength to the story, a band of orgs on wargs against a thin ridge in the rising sun replacing a company of dwarves on a moor against a beautiful sunset in the mountains in the previous film. Smaug is also a delicate topic: it is beautifully played by Cumberbatch, who gave more than his voice to the dragon. (And the irony of having Smaug getting the higher ground in his conversation with Bilbo, just like Holmes getting the better of Watson in the BBC series!) Nonetheless, the last third of the film when the dwarves face him is altogether unconvincing, missing the subtle and hypnotic features of dragons and somehow making Smaug appear more like the dragon in Shrek… The trick of the final scene eventually worked out for me, but the preliminaries were so unconvincing. Having Smaug playing hide and seek with the group of dwarves, while destroying the halls of Erebor, is contradicting the reputation for deep cunning (Μῆτις) of the dragons! The last point I want to make is somehow of lesser importance: Peter Jackson chose to move away from the book in many more ways in this second film, when compared with the first one. This is not an issue in that no movie can reproduce the most notable features of the book, so changes would be welcomed had they brought a more epic tone to the Quest. Alas, this is not the case and the scenes of Gandalf in dol Guldur make him sound like an incompetent beginner, while the inclusions of Tauriel and of the corrupted Master of Laketown branch off the main theme with a superfluous love triangle and with an unnecessary depiction of greed, once again taking some precious time off from setting the journey more safely into its epic dimension. Not too mention the additional tension created by the orcish pursuit. All in all, not an unpleasant film, but much lighter than it could have been…

Orcs vs. Dwarves

A few years ago, I read and definitely enjoyed Orcs by Stan Nicholls. The fundamental idea of the book was to write a story from the viewpoint of a band of marauding orcs. If you ever read a fantasy book, like the Lord of the Rings, you will understand how unusual this perspective can be! Orcs are usually dull and stupid, The dialogues were quite witty and, despite a rather weak plot, the book was definitely a success. My son loved it and read the next volume as well… (The main criticism I could make of the book is that the orcs are too human to make the experiment a complete success.)