Tell me, tutor,' I said. 'Is revenge a science, or an art?

Shockingly good, if disturbing to many --- Prince of Thorns succeeds in making the reader uncomfortable by its use of the first person, thus the one turning pages is linked (complicit?) with the amoral Jorg, whose bloody temper leaves scores of bodies in his quest for vengeance not only against those which harmed him (and killed those close to him) but against the very tropes of the fantasy novel. We have Charlemagne on Fury Road. The setting itself

Spoiler

an Earth 1000 years after nuclear catastrophe

is the remarkable feat as is the narrative turn in the second half of the novel. Despite references to Popper and Russell (which excited me) the endgame is essentially Oldboy---or think Rick Dalton with a flamethrower.