Half a War by Joe Abercrombie

Father Yarvi has brokered an unlikely peace between the formerly warring kingdoms of Gettland and Vansterland, bringing them together to stand against the forces of the High King. Still tremendously outnumbered, Yarvi is forced to rely on an untested young queen to help lead the way to victory and a last stand at the fortress of Bail's Point.

Half a War concludes the Shattered Sea trilogy by Joe Abercrombie, an experiment by the British author to write shorter novels aimed at a more general audience. How successful that experiment has been is quite debatable - the tone and feeling of the trilogy is really not far removed from his First Law universe novels - but it's certainly resulted in the impressive delivering of three very decent novels in less than eighteen months.

As with the previous book, Half a War revolves around three main POV characters: Skara, the young and untested queen of Throvenland; Raith, the bloodthirsty Vansterland warrior made into Skara's reluctant bodyguard; and Koll, the woodcarver turned minister-in-training who finds himself increasingly serving as Yarvi's conscience as Yarvi is forced into more and more desperate acts to try to save his people. Previous POV characters become secondary characters in this novel, which is both clever (showing how others see them) and frustrating, particularly when they don't all survive.

This is a war story, with the great fortress of Bail's Point changing hands as the fortunes of the conflict ebb and flow. Abercrombie has done big war stories and battle narratives before and does a good job of depicting the conflict here, helped by a map of Bail's Point. However, the limited POV structure means that a great deal of the details of the conflict are missing. This is effective in giving us a feel of the fog of war, with confusion and misinformation lurking everywhere, but it does occasionally make the conflict feel murkier than it should.

Abercrombie's razor-sharp characterisation is on top form here, with Skara developing believably into a ruler from humble beginnings and secondary characters like Blue Jenner and King Uthil getting outstanding and memorable moments. However, it's Father Yarvi who develops most fascinatingly in this novel. Yarvi's ruthlessness was on display in the second book, but in this one it pushes him into more and more dangerous decisions that even shock his allies. The development of Koll as his moral weathervane is nicely done; without Koll, it may be that Yarvi would have become another version of Bayaz from the First Law books (i.e. Unrepentant Amoral Bastard Gandalf). As it stands he comes pretty damn close, and it's likely any future Shattered Sea books will have to deal with the fallout from his actions.

Half a War (****) closes the Shattered Sea trilogy in style, with a war story that prioritises the characters over the action and ends well by not pulling a single punch. The novel is available in the UK and USA now.

Decoding the map of Joe Abercrombie's Shattered Sea

Joe Abercrombie's Shattered Sea Trilogy of fantasy novels - Half a King, Half the World and the forthcoming Half a War - have been a big hit for the author. Aimed at a slightly younger audience than his First Law books, they have been shorter, more concise and more focused. They also have a distinct sense of place, a frigid land surrounding the Shattered Sea. As readers have noted, there is something very familiar about this world and the recently-published second volume leaves little doubt that this is our world in the distant future.

The Shattered Sea itself appears to be the Baltic, with the coastlines significantly altered. Large chunks of Finland appear to be underwater, Stockholm has been split off onto an island and the Gulf of Bothnia appears to have mostly disappeared. However, the map is also clearly not to scale and based around the understanding of the locals, so it might just be that the map is wildly inaccurate compared to the 'reality' of the geography in the world. The Divine and Denied Rivers are clearly the Dvina and Dnieper, and the route taken by the main characters in Half the World is pretty similar to that of real-history Viking traders and raiders who would travel as far as Constantinople (the First of Cities) via the eastern European rivers and the Black Sea (now the Golden Sea). Here's a possible mapping of the Shattered Sea locations onto a map of Europe (and many thanks to this thread on Westeros.org for the inspiration):

Other locations are more speculative, although pretty well supported by the maps and names. There are a few oddities, with Smolod sounding similar to Smolensk but being in the wrong place, but it may be that names have moved around and been corrupted with time and been applied to the wrong locations.

It'll be interesting to see if Half a War expands on the information we have and reveals more new locations.

New cover art from Sanderson & Abercrombie

Tor have revealed the American cover art for Shadows of Self, the fifth Mistborn novel from Brandon Sanderson and the second of four books featuring the characters of Wax and Wayne. The book will be out in October this year and will rapidly be followed by its sequel, Bands of Morning, in January 2016.

Meanwhile, Del Rey have unveiled the American cover for Half a War, the concluding volume of The Shattered Sea Trilogy. This book will be out on 16 July in the UK and 28 July in the USA and concludes the story begun in Half a King and Half the World.

No word yet on if Abercrombie and Sanderson will ever collaborate on a novel, possibly one where swearing forms the basis for an imaginative magic system.