I came across this recently and immediately thought it screamed DLP.

Prince Of Thorns by Mark Lawrence

One of the very few books where the protagonist is an utter bastard with almost no redeming qualities. He's a brash, overconfident, antisocial nutcase, but I still wanted to see him win.

The only two problems I have with the book are it's setting (post apocalyptic world with no guns? Really?), and it's length. I read the book within 4 hours, and even though it was satisfying, I really would have loved a couple hundred more pages.

 

"When he was nine, he watched his mother and brother killed before him. By the time he was thirteen, he was the leader of a band of bloodthirsty thugs. By fifteen, he intends to be king... "

Sounds like a very bad indy! story.

 

It does, doesn't it? The difference lies mostly in the character I think. The author doesn't pull his punches in terms of how "bad" the protagonist is, so you can actually believe he's seen some shit after he burns a village down and personally rapes the daughters of the village leader.

Unlike most indv! stories, where the protagonist is a swell guy with an emo haircut.

 

So the protagonist is a basically a not-as-badass version of Karsa Orlong from House of Chains?

 

Just recently read this. I was just browsing at my local library and picked this up at random.

It certainly doesn't pull its punches regarding the sociopathic nature of the protagonist. Jorg isn't quite evil, but is at the very least a dark, dark, dark grey. Within the first six pages, he's already slaughtered a village, raped the town leader's daughters, and burned them and the rest of the villagers alive.

The world Jorg lives in is rife with death, often meaningless, so the atrocities Jorg commits often makes him just as bad as his enemies.

While the initial revulsion and incredulity (that a 14-year old could lead a band of hardened brigands) is quite hard to swallow, the book quickly picks up pace as Lawrence lays out a fascinating world with clues spread across the book. If nothing else, the world building in the book was particularly good.

The characterization of Jorg is excellent and the combat is well-portrayed - it's neither too detailed nor too terse and Jorg's predicaments and solutions are well handled.

There's an even handed mix of violence, plot, and politics spread across the story. The interactions between Jorg and his father are quite interesting.

A key theme in the book is the issue of sacrifice. Jorg views attachments and emotional connections as liabilities, distractions preventing him from securing his ambitions. He has some difficulties with this however in later parts of the book.

I feel it deserves a 4 or a 4.5 out of 5. I look forward to the sequel.

 

I devoured this back in December after it was mentioned. The plot is pretty standard, but Jorg is a great character. He vaguely reminds me of an older, non-genius Artemis Fowl that has zero qualms about being a vindictive sociopath.

 

Artemis Fowl is fairly apt comparison.

A lot of reviewers have been comparing this to GRRM's A Song of Ice and Fire, which besides the brutal medieval-inspired fantasy, I can't see the similarities. Unlike GRRM, Prince of Thorns has a principal character who will probably not die until at least the final book, whereas GRRM has no problem killing off POV characters. Also, PoT's world is a pretty unique twist, sort of like Dying Earth.

 

Read this thread and then read it. It was decent. Short (470 pages, which took me like three hours, a waste of money to buy), but decent. 4/5.