While I wouldn't have chosen Joe Abercrombie's Half a King for myself, I read it for a book group, and at the least I can say it surpassed my admittedly low expectations. As the blurbs on its cover suggest, it is a story of violence and revenge--not my taste at all, but given that, I found the plot to be compelling enough that I wanted to pick the book up again once I'd put it down.
However, I'm not sure exactly what to make of the main character's disability (his left hand has only a thumb and index finger). I felt that his constant self-doubt and self-deprecation as a result of his different hand was a bit wearing and unoriginal; his focus is constantly on what he cannot do or be as a result of his physical difference, rather than on the things he can do and be. While he exhibits some growth in this regard, partly as a result of being enslaved (see next paragraph), I would have really been far more into a book that shows a person with a disability who isn't mainly defined by that disability, as Yarvi seems to be. I will say that Half a King does, at least, largely evade the horrible trope of characters with disabilities who are medically or magically cured by the end of the book. (Though apparently there are sequels to Half a King which I haven't read, so I can't vouch for the fate of Yarvi's hand in them...) While Yarvi feels more confident about himself by the end of the novel, it is not because his left hand has not been medically or magically enhanced in any way.
Yet a big problem is that Yarvi's increased confidence comes mostly as a result of his enslavement. He's never been much of a fighter and has been more of a weakling, and he's forced into better shape by his time as a slave--an absurd and tired trope of so much literature, especially of speculative fiction, that if one is forced into horrible feats of physical endurance, usually as a result of enslavement or kidnapping, one will emerge physically fit. What baloney. The upside to being enslaved is not that you become physically stronger and more confident. The upside to being enslaved is--oh, wait, there is no upside to being enslaved. It's amazing how many books seem to forget that, even as they describe filthy conditions, near starvation, and whippings. How much more interesting would it be to have had Yarvi decide, for his own reasons of vengeance or whatever, that he was going to make the effort himself to become stronger and more confident, and then follow it through?
Despite these (rather large) reservations, I'll remind my gentle readers once more that my complaints about Half a King are by no means unique to this book, and, in fact, are found in some form or another in many fantasy novels (and in other genres, too). Still, if the best I can say about a book is that it does no worse than other novels on a couple of tropes, that's not exactly a ringing praise... I can't really write my encouragement here to go and read this book for its own sake, but I will say it offers a lot of points for thought and critique.
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