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A review by barb4ry1
Anaerfell by Joshua Robertson, Jc Boyd
2.0
There are books that make me strongly root for antiheroes despite all their vices. You know, characters like Jorg Ancrath, Drake Morrass or Inquisitor Glokta. I love them.
Anaerfell is all about antiheroes – reckless, devoid of goodness or any redeeming qualities. As dark as dark can be. It could have been interesting. But wasn't. The thing is I don’t care about them. At all. I’ve read this book as part of my r/fantasy Bingo Challenge and getting through the book to the end was a real challenge, an excellent training of strong will and perseverance.
Frankly, I fail to see why it received mainly four and five star ratings on goodreads so far. But hey, it's just me. If you liked the book, that's great:)
The story follows two brothers Kaligula – cunning and restless Drast and calculating but tactless Tyran. They were turned monsters by their father Serder Dagmar Kaligula. In order to make him immortal they’re supposed to kill a God. Before they do so they kill a lot of other people though, mostly innocent ones and have some fun doing it.
The description sounds promising but the story, world-building and characters are strongly lacking. There are more things that I disliked about the book, then the things I liked. All in all I think it was an average book I won’t remember reading in two months.
The things I liked:
- Fights are very visual and well described (especially the fight between Arkhon Kluk and Dagmar Kaligula – it was very imaginative and well paced).
- The premise is interesting.
- I think that magic system – koldovstvo- is done well as magic comes with a price. The more you use it, the more life energy you spent. Threats like walking on water or flying are possible but at the cost of ageing decades and turning into a husk of a man in an instant.
And that's all. Things I disliked:
While magic system is quite interesting, it’s introduced and explained in clumsy way, for example through unnatural dialogue (imagine you meet with a friend and see a falling leaves. How natural would it sound to start conversation in a way like – Ah, in our world the leaves fall because of gravity. – Yes, you’re right and gravity works this way because blah, blah, blah. - Yes, yes, you're right but there are exceptions. Have in mind that blah, blah, blah).
Generally there’s a problem with dialogues, especially between Tyran and Isolde – they sound like pasted from venezulean telenovela. Unimaginative, cheesy and cheap.
Then we have characters – they’re bad guys. They lack redeeming qualities. That would be ok if only they would be complex. Sadly they aren’t. Sure, the authors try to add some complexity, especially to Tyran character, but it doesn’t work for me. Their father is described as bad, terrifying person who turned brothers into what they are. The things is when he appears he doesn’t give this vibe. He feels flat, where bad papas like Tywin Lannister or Olidan Ancrath were complex or terrifying, Dagmar feels like a caricature.
The writing wasn’t bad, some editing would help with lacking words and some typos, but it was consistent and quite precise. On the other hand my feeling is it didn’t manage to build tension and drama that would further the plot. The pacing was fast but, truth be told, I didn’t care. The story didn’t manage to grab my attention. There were few passages that I found interesting, last 5 % of the book are well written but 5% isn’t enough to make up for 95 % of mostly boring tale.
I think that what put me off was mostly flatness of characters, their lack of palpable complexity and lack of humor. Also a lot of cruelty. Abercrombie, Lawrence, Rob J Hayes write antiheroes well, making them complex and adding some layers of humor to the world that allows me to enjoy their books a lot. Here however the things were dark just for the sake of it. Dark, dreary and deadly serious. Making it deadly boring wasn't, probably, an intention of the authors but for me getting through the book was a chore. Not because I loathed charatcers or had physical reaction to the graphic scenes of violence. It was because I didn't care.
Anaerfell is all about antiheroes – reckless, devoid of goodness or any redeeming qualities. As dark as dark can be. It could have been interesting. But wasn't. The thing is I don’t care about them. At all. I’ve read this book as part of my r/fantasy Bingo Challenge and getting through the book to the end was a real challenge, an excellent training of strong will and perseverance.
Frankly, I fail to see why it received mainly four and five star ratings on goodreads so far. But hey, it's just me. If you liked the book, that's great:)
The story follows two brothers Kaligula – cunning and restless Drast and calculating but tactless Tyran. They were turned monsters by their father Serder Dagmar Kaligula. In order to make him immortal they’re supposed to kill a God. Before they do so they kill a lot of other people though, mostly innocent ones and have some fun doing it.
The description sounds promising but the story, world-building and characters are strongly lacking. There are more things that I disliked about the book, then the things I liked. All in all I think it was an average book I won’t remember reading in two months.
The things I liked:
- Fights are very visual and well described (especially the fight between Arkhon Kluk and Dagmar Kaligula – it was very imaginative and well paced).
- The premise is interesting.
- I think that magic system – koldovstvo- is done well as magic comes with a price. The more you use it, the more life energy you spent. Threats like walking on water or flying are possible but at the cost of ageing decades and turning into a husk of a man in an instant.
And that's all. Things I disliked:
While magic system is quite interesting, it’s introduced and explained in clumsy way, for example through unnatural dialogue (imagine you meet with a friend and see a falling leaves. How natural would it sound to start conversation in a way like – Ah, in our world the leaves fall because of gravity. – Yes, you’re right and gravity works this way because blah, blah, blah. - Yes, yes, you're right but there are exceptions. Have in mind that blah, blah, blah).
Generally there’s a problem with dialogues, especially between Tyran and Isolde – they sound like pasted from venezulean telenovela. Unimaginative, cheesy and cheap.
Then we have characters – they’re bad guys. They lack redeeming qualities. That would be ok if only they would be complex. Sadly they aren’t. Sure, the authors try to add some complexity, especially to Tyran character, but it doesn’t work for me. Their father is described as bad, terrifying person who turned brothers into what they are. The things is when he appears he doesn’t give this vibe. He feels flat, where bad papas like Tywin Lannister or Olidan Ancrath were complex or terrifying, Dagmar feels like a caricature.
The writing wasn’t bad, some editing would help with lacking words and some typos, but it was consistent and quite precise. On the other hand my feeling is it didn’t manage to build tension and drama that would further the plot. The pacing was fast but, truth be told, I didn’t care. The story didn’t manage to grab my attention. There were few passages that I found interesting, last 5 % of the book are well written but 5% isn’t enough to make up for 95 % of mostly boring tale.
I think that what put me off was mostly flatness of characters, their lack of palpable complexity and lack of humor. Also a lot of cruelty. Abercrombie, Lawrence, Rob J Hayes write antiheroes well, making them complex and adding some layers of humor to the world that allows me to enjoy their books a lot. Here however the things were dark just for the sake of it. Dark, dreary and deadly serious. Making it deadly boring wasn't, probably, an intention of the authors but for me getting through the book was a chore. Not because I loathed charatcers or had physical reaction to the graphic scenes of violence. It was because I didn't care.