Half A War

conclusion of the Shattered Sea trilogy, which really should have been one book, as is clear when the stories and characters all converge and the central thrust of the narrative ideas becomes clear. as the conclusion approaches, the point of view emerges as very grimdark, and the whole Greater Good perspective comes under harsh scrutiny, till the situation becomes once more stable and a radical shift in the balance of power comes into play. (at least for awhile.)

Satisfying end to the faux-Viking Shattered Sea Trilogy. Father Yarvi sets up an unlikely alliance -- many are enemies of his enemy, after Princess Skara bursts in and tells him of murders of her family by the High King and Grandmother Wexen. They all overcome them, using elf-weapons. Father Yarvi gets his revenge.

I can't help feel some disappointment at this ending. While it continues with the same raucous pace and engaging characters as the previous two, a few choices lead to exactly the kind of cynical, "grimdark" story that those books avoided - to their benefit. There is no triumph in this ending, indeed barely even any respite, merely a resolution of current ills.

I will avoid spoilers, but in particular one character's death seemed to serve no purpose other than to show that war is, indeed, hell. it didn't drive character or plot development, served no cathartic role, and served as only the barest of motivators for a barely seen side action.

But the resolution nearly tied up the three books, and the writing remains outstanding, and it was a generally fun read.

I read this book fairly closely on the heels of the second novel in the series, and I felt like it lacked something that really pulled me into the novel which directly preceded it. The story itself is strong, introducing new characters while also continuing the tales of those from prior volumes and centered around a conflict with the wide-ranging consequences. Overall, this was a solid novel and a satisfying conclusion to the trilogy, if only that it lacked a certain something that I felt the preceding book had.

A fine conclusion. We certainly have come a long way from where we started with some of these characters. The degree and nature of the changes are rare for the genre, I think, and well done. But then one hardly expects rainbows and unicorns from Lord Grimdark (unless they're, like, rabid zombie unicorns).

An absolutely amazing end to this trilogy. Once again Abercrombie was able to make this book just fly by. I could not put it down, the excitement and need to just keep going was so strong. While I did initially put off reading the final book, I always do for the fear of my favorite character possibly dying, I do always finish them. I decided to just plunge in and finish it, and yes, my worst fear came true, my favorite character died!But I will say it took me by complete surprise since the entire build up to it, Abercombie had me focusing on two other characters in the same situation that when it hit who actually died, I felt like I was slapped across the face, I was taken by shock, I was sidelined, and immediately I burst into tears. I appreciate this form of death reveal, because I was so focused on the other two that It never even crossed my mind that my favorite was in jeopardy, so the reveal just hit more.The amount of trickery, lies, betrayals and people just playing each other, just kept building and building and I never once thought it could just keep going like that, but it did and it made it so worth it. It got to the point where I no longer knew who to trust {yah Yarvi Im looking at you!!!!] But it made the entire book so much more interesting. I wanted to know the next lie, the next betrayal, the next scheme, it was all so intricate and so compelling.The thing I appreciate most is the usage of characters, once again we were introduced to new characters, but old ones kept reoccurring. But the new characters fit in so well, that it felt like they had always been apart of the story. I really liked Raith and Rakki, and my heart hurts for these boys. Seeing Skara grow throughout the story was interesting and while she isn't a favorite of mine, she does eventually become a very cunning and strong female character. I love that Abercrombie was able to portray so many different looking women and each of them be likable in different manners. They were not cookie cutter typical YA women and I appreciate that.The action was constant and bloody and gross but so compelling that it was hard to not get engrossed in what was unfolding. The battle lasted for a few pages but the outcomes where never pretty and Abercrombie doesn't gloss over that, he lays it out like it is. People die, people get injured, badly, and the land is ruined and people have real reactions to it. But the thing I like most about his battle scenes where the realistic parts of main characters injuries, It wasn't just the side characters or some random dude in the background. These people are at war and people get hurt and to see that actually portrayed on to the main characters was so fulfilling, its something that is missing from so many YA fantasy series.And yes there was plenty of love stories entwined into the last book, but you know what, they were the most realistic love stories ever, that I appreciated them when they unfolded. Not everyone ended up with who they wanted, others lost those they loved, some had one nightstands and then some got their happy ending. Every piece of love story that was included felt real, they never felt rushed, and they definitely were not all happy and lovey dovey. An absolute great ending to this trilogy!

This was fun. Building off the Hamlet theme of the first book, we've seen the Hamlet figure go after Fortinbras while restoring a good uncle to marry his mother, and now we see him after even more. New characters figure in each volume, and this one was fun with allusions to other fantasy works. The first book seemed to gesture to G.R.R. Martin with a Tyrion theme, next up was Arya, and now we have bits of Eddings (the Queen dressing in mail to enthrall the men) among other nods and winks here & there. It was good fun. I listened to the audiobook format, which was well-performed.

The post-apocalyptic future theme is developed further as well, making this almost a spaghetti Western at one point, with all guns blazing in a standoff. A dash of Brooks in that, but I like this playfulness and willingness to not explain everything better. With some iodine pills for radiation sickness ("beans") things move back to "our" world (and finally, the "elves" aren't coded indigenous populations!) only to turn things in another direction.

Hey finish up a trilogy, let's make this book have yet another main character. Easy to mock, but it somehow works fine. Ultimately it is a satisfying conclusion to the series.

Comments on the series as a whole: First of all wonderful maps in the versions I read. Really helps with the world building in my opinion. Second, I kind of like that some people end up kinda like jerks but don't die or get fixed--just like real life.

A good ending to a good series. You can tell that it is YA and not the regular dark fantasy Abercrombie likes to write, but it's still a fairly good series.

This was a satisfying conclusion to a very good series. I liked all of the new characters that were introduced with the highlight being Bright Yilling. He's a villain you love to hate and can't wait to see fall.

There were a couple of things I didn't like. Thorn Bathu was hardly used after being such a major character in the last book. Also, after spending the entire second book on a voyage to make the Empress of the South an ally, she is not mentioned once here during the war. Not even for a possible call for reinforcements when they are badly outnumbered by the High King's army.

These are just minor issues I had with it. This is still a very good book, and series overall is well worth a read.

Joe Abercrombie concludes his Shattered Seas Trilogy with the book Half A War. This volume follows immediately in the wake of the previous book and most of the familiar characters are in place, although in this story he places a couple of new characters front and center. The young Princess Skara of Throvenland and her sword man and chosen warrior, Raife joins forces with the rulers of Gettland and Vansterland in order to finally break free of the chains that the High King and Mother Wexen binds them with. The story that started with Yarvi comes finally comes full circle but with this author you can be sure the ending is anything but predictable. As with all Joe Abercrombie stories, there are betrayals, revenge, battles and drama aplenty. Basing his tale on Viking lore these larger than life characters that we have come to know prepare for the final battle and overcome enormous odds. There are plenty of twists and turns and as usual, Abercrombie doesn’t flinch from bloodshed and violence. Half A War was exactly how I wished this trilogy to end with warrior showdowns, sieges, death for some of the characters and victory for others. As in life there isn’t a happy ending for everyone but the story was brought to a satisfactory conclusion although one is left with the impression that master storyteller Abercrombie could return to this world in the future.

Pretty good conclusion to the series with some new interesting characters and some nice action.

2.5 stars, rounded up.

I was disappointed with this one, primarily because none of the main characters from the first two books (Father Yarvi, Thorne, and Brand) were main characters in this third volume. Who writes a trilogy and doesn't keep the main characters front and center?

The book was only so-so for me, primarily because of the point made above, and I just didn't care about Princess Skara, Koll, or Raith, or what happened in the story leading up to the (disappointing) battle with Grandmother Wexen and the High King. Talk about a let down! It was a perfect set-up: obtain the elf magic and destroy your enemies with one or two magical blows .

I really felt like Abercrombie shorted himself on this one, that he took the easy road to completing it. Maybe he got tired of the ya trope himself, and decided to end it as soon as possible with as little effort as possible. I don't know, but it was so very disappointing.

I know the negatives sound bad here, but overall, the entire series was pretty good, and I'd still recommend it to Abercrombie completists.

I enjoyed this final volume of the Shattered Sea trilogy quite a bit but some of the choices that the author made regarding the characters were, in my opinion, not how I saw this ending. Lots of action throughout this final volume and you will see several of the main characters featured in the first two books who are killed off or turned towards evil in this one. I was also somewhat disappointed that Thorn Bathu was relegated to only a minor part in the finale.

Overall a fun and interesting read and a good finish to the trilogy. Recommended for fantasy fans and all reading the series.

The conclusion to the Shattered Sea trilogy of dark fantasy for young adults once again offers up new primary characters to follow. With the previous incumbents being relegated to more minor roles in so far as narration duties if not actual deeds go. Skara is a princess in the kingdom of Throvenland and soon finds herself the last surviving member of her family when her grandfather, the king, is brutally slain by an emissary from the High King supposedly sent to deliver peace terms. She manages to escape and heads to Gettland for aid, it being one of the last holdouts against the tyrannical ruler. Raith is the second narrator for this tale. Sword-bearer to Gom-gil-Gorm, he is passed to Skara as protector when she claims her birthright, defying the High King and attempting to reclaim what is rightfully hers. Equal in temperament to Thorn Bathu can he curb his natural eagerness to fight everyone he comes into contact with to perform his new duties or does his former master have other plans for him? Can Skara survive long enough to forge a true alliance between those in open rebellion?Very unusually I think I liked the middle book of the trilogy more than either the first or this concluding volume. Not that this was a bad book. It does tie up all the loose ends and concludes the tale of revenge sworn by Yarvi in the opener. I think I just preferred the characters in the second book more than either of the others. It's still a well written tale with plenty of exciting action scenes to enjoy and you know with Joe Abercrombie stories that there will be twists and betrayals galore and this proves no exception though most can be readily anticipated. I hope the author returns to his more adult-oriented books in future and I'm thankful that I still have a few of his earlier tomes to get to.

A fine finish to an excellent series. Villains dispatched, revenge abounds, new quests sought and a young queen makes a difficult choice. Perhaps Mr. Abercrombie will visit this world at some future date to see if Father Peace or Mother War prevails.

Deus-ex-Machina YA Fiction: "Half A War" by Joe Abercrombie Published July 16th 2015.

Back in the day when I was a teenager, I’d run away from YA Fiction as fast as the devil from the cross. Mind you the label “YA Fiction” didn’t exist back then. Most of what I read, well the older stuff anyway, I’d not hesitate to give to a teenager. However, when I was a teenager I didn't shy away from any book. If anything I tended to avoid "YA" because being a normal teenager, I wanted people to believe I was older for my age. Today, reading YA books is "cooler" than in my day but that just makes YA even more of a marketing ploy instead of the content recommendation it should be. That is why so many of my favourite authors are jumping on the YA Fiction bandwagon. That is where the money is at. I’m afraid Abercrombie succumbed to it.

This one is probably the worst of the trilogy. First things first. The elf magic’s origins, which had been hinted at throughout in the previous 2 volumes, came full bore and my first reaction was, “WTF???” At times I thought I was a reading an episode from the Shannarra TV series. I guess I don’t find this kind of plot device as cool anymore. Second: Yarvi’s transformation. I was utterly shocked. That’s why this whole book felt completely off to me. It doesn’t fit in the whole scheme of things, seemed like something Abercrombie wanted to pushed something through at the end that couldn’t be reconciled with everything that came before in the first 2 volumes. Third: Raith. He looks like Thorn’s male version of Thorn! Fourth: The ending. Deus-ex-machina. Enough said.
“The First Law Trilogy” and his stand-alone novels offer stronger stories, dialogues and most important of all, more fully-rounded characters.

Joe, if you went to the other side of the “Force”, I’ll never forgive you…

NB: I still rate “Half a King” as the best book from the trilogy. The trilogy should have stopped there.

NB2: Half A King, Half A World (my reviews from the previous 2 volumes)

The final book in the Shattered Sea trilogy. A very enjoyable tale, though not quite as good as the first book (Half a King) of the triligy. The audio-version from Recorded books is very well done.

And that is how the story of the Shattered Sea ends. Or at least the one that Yarvi started in the first book. As with the previous two books, Abercombie has a teenager in the middle of the story - the princess Skara from Throvenland - who loses the last of her relatives, her grandfather to one of the killers employed by the High King. And with his death, there are only two lands remaining in the uprising against authority - Gettland (lead by Uthil) and Vansterland (lead by Grom-gil-Gorm). Except that Skara is not ready to give up and abandon her land and her people. Between her hatred for the man that killed everyone that she ever knew and cared about and Yarvi's oath to avenge his father, the three nations somehow manage to find a way to work together. It takes betrayals and deaths, elf's weapons (and if noone had yet realized that elves are actually the humans of our days - the world of the Shattered Sea is a post-apocalyptic Earth, that book makes it clear without spelling it), a lot of old friends - Koll and Brand, Thorn and Skifr, Ryn and Blue Jenner. At the end, the book is weaker than the first 2 - it needs to wrap up the story and tie all the loose ends. Because of that we end up seeing a lot more betrayals and a lot more bad actions performed by the good guys than ever before. While the first two installments in the trilogy mostly toyed with the idea of any of our heroes being evil. This book toes and crosses the line - everyone seem to be capable of everything. At the end the trilogy as a whole is worth reading - it is a coming of edge story and it is a coming to power story; it is a quest and it is one of the better examples of epic fantasy created lately. And the world, before or after you recognize it for what it is, is built masterfully. In a way it being revealed to be Earth is part of the mastery. The series is categorized as YA but it lacks the usual problem of the genre - characterization is well done, people get to make hard choices. And that is what makes it not just a nice read but a great trilogy.

I really like how Abercrombie built the Shattered Sea trilogy. The first book (Half a King) focuses on the young, crippled boy who would become Father Yarvi, a powerful minister. Yarvi and other characters continue in the second book (Half a World) but the focus switches to prickly Thorn Bathu (great name!) and her gentle giant of a man, Brand. In Half a War, these stories revolve around three new characters: a young princess determined to avenge the destruction of her homeland, the confident warrior assigned to protect her, and Father Yarvi's self-doubting apprentice. The backdrop is the never-ending battle of power between the vaguely Scandinavian Shattered Sea countries and the High King who, with advice from his scheming minister Grandmother Wexen, intends to defeat them all. Abercrombie's bigger message is about our internal conflict with choices, such as trying to be good and failing or intentionally doing harm to achieve a greater good. The final book competently concludes the characters' stories (whether satisfyingly or not depends on the reader) and is sophisticated enough for adults but also accessible for teens. The writing sets the tone of the books with customary sayings such as "Death waits for us all" and with references to Mother War and Father Peace often setting up amusing responses. The title refers to the belief that only half a war is fought with swords -- the other half is fought with cunning words and strategy. The Shattered Sea series provides plenty of both halves.

Wraps up the Shattered Sea trilogy. Like the second book in the series, there are new pov characters. The pov characters from the two previous books remain in supporting roles. I don’t know how I feel about the conclusion of events. Like some other reviewers I thought this was the weakest of the three books, it's still worth reading though, especially if you have read the first two.

This is the conclusion to the Shattered Sea series that I kept meaning to read. This was the weakest of the three books with the first one my favorite. That doesn't mean I didn't enjoy it though. I did very much like it. Set into the series as a whole it wrapped up the overall story line nicely while introducing some new characters. The ending did feel a little rushed, but that is a minor quibble. A solid choice as a series for fantasy fans.

The first book in this trilogy introduced Father Yarvi, the second followed Thorn Bathu. The conclusion has a bit of a wider focus. The 'main character' is arguably the princess Skara, but Thorn and Yarvi are also prominently featured, as well as several other POV characters. The result is a book that feels a little less personal and immediate, at least to me.

However, it's unquestionably an excellent book. It's witty, insightful and full of 'quotable quotes,' (not all of which would the author agree with, clearly.) It's also even darker than the first two in the series. We see people who have, or are in the process of becoming, harsh and cruel. There's quite a lot of ends justifying the means. As one might expect in a book about war, there is revenge, betrayal, sacrifice, and cold-blooded choices. In many situations there seemingly is no 'greater good,' only a 'lesser evil.'

The title refers to the idea that "only half a war is fought with swords" - the other half, of course, is fought with the mind: strategizing and out-thinking one's opponent. But the damage caused by such plots can be more devastating than a straightforward battle.

One small plot point aggravated me: After all his waffling, no way in hell should Rin have put up with Koll's belated and half-assed apologies to get back together with him. I would've been so much more delighted if she had told him he missed his chance, and to screw off.

I have to admit that I didn't like this book *quite* as much as the previous two - but it was still quite excellent.

Half a War is the last in the Shattered Sea trilogy by Joe Abercrombie. It finally brings us to the confrontation with the High King and Grandmother Wexen whose machinations have brought the Shattered Sea to a world war. While the characters from the first books are active and present in this final book, their thoughts and motivations are opaque to us now. Instead, we follow Koll, who carved the mast in the second book, Skara and Raith, two new characters.Skara is now Queen of Throvenland which has just been invaded, the cities and towns burned, the minister and king, her grandfather murdered. She escapes to Gettland, seeking refuge and help to take back her kingdom from her allies, the kings of Gettland and Vansterland. Grom gil Gorm, the mythic king of Vansterland is still with us and his cup bearer Raith is seconded to Skara as her guard.Skara is the central character–a young woman trained to rule with the wisdom of her grandfather and his minister a foundation on which she launches her struggle to regain her throne and avenge their murders. She was taught that battle is half the war and strategy and intellect is the other. She has more than enough of that to wage a war.I think this is a great book. Engrossing, exciting and filled with interesting characters. I love that Abercrombie does not waste pages and pages catching us up on old friends, trusting his readers to be able to keep up without explication. I also love that each book shifts point of view to new people – enabling us to see people we have come to admire with a more cynical eye.Koll, Skara and Raith all transition to mature adulthood through the course of the story. They suffer great losses and win victories and come to the inevitable difficulty of trying to do good when there are no good choices. Moral ambiguity is part of war and they suffer for it.3pawsI recommend reading the entire Shattered Sea trilogy. These books contain a complete and well-imagined world with theologies, customs and histories that are intriguing and surprising. I will confess to being taken very much by surprise when they visited the Elf city to get Elf weapons. The plot is complex and comes together beautifully in a finale to this series that is satisfying if not exactly happy.

Good character development, great story, lots of action, and a twist that leaves even the most experienced reader surprised. This novel is book 3, so make sure you read the previous two novels first. The book is well-written and the world/setting created is well worth it. This series has made me a dedicated Joe Abercrombie fan. LT Early Reviewers

Abercrombie is such an excellent writer, but one sometimes wishes he were less realistic; of course, then I wouldn’t appreciate him so much, but my inner child wishing for fairy tale endings would be a bit happier.This fantasy, the third of a trilogy that began with Half A King and continued with Half The World, features the inevitable showdown among the various contending powers living around the Shattered Sea. We hear the tale from the point of view of three characters: 17-year-old Princess Skara of Throvenland; Raith, the sword-bearer of Grom-Gil-Gorm, the fearsome King of Vansterland - “Breaker of Swords and Maker of Orphans”; and Koll, who we previously met as the son of the couple Yarvi had promised to protect, after freeing the mother and son from slavery. All are part of the coalition opposing the High King and his minster, Grandmother Wexler.This is a book full of fortune cookie pronouncements and their realizations. (Unfortunately, one of the fortunes is not “all’s well that ends well.”) They include the adage that only half a war is fought with swords; the other is fought with the mind, or in another version, with skill and courage. Words, too, are weapons. In addition, the inevitable fantasy book truism that you can only conquer your fears by facing them (a.k.a., “fear is the mind killer, from Dune) makes a couple of appearances. There is also the observation that “Freedom’s worth nothing to the dead. Pride’s worth little even to the living.” And there are many variations of “life sucks and then you die,” some of which add a “carpe diem” sentiment, such as this admonition by the nose-picking character of Skifr:“‘Seize life with both hands!’ … ‘Rejoice in what you have. Power, wealth, fame, they are ghosts! They are like the breeze, impossible to hold. There is not grand destination. Every path ends at the Last Door. Revel in the sparks one person strikes from another. . . . They are the only light in the darkness of time.”Another version by Koll:"…death waits for us all. Life’s about making the best of what you find along the way. A man who’s not content with what he’s got, well, more than likely he won’t be content with what he hasn’t.”Intermixed with these sentiments are occasional passages of beauty that are all the more striking for being part of scenes of battle and death:“The land was a black mystery when the ships began to plow ashore, the sky a dark blue cloth slashed with cloud and stabbed with stars.”…“They sat, cold and silent, as Father Moon rose and his children the stars showed themselves, and the flames of the burning ship, and the burning goods, and the burning king lit up the faces of the hundred hundred mourners. . . . They sat until the flames sank to a flickering, and the keel sagged into whirling embers, and the first muddy smear of dawn touched the clouds, glittering on the restless sea…. But the occasional homage to beauty doesn’t gainsay the ever-present face of death, pain, ill consequences of greed, the corruption of power, and the sacrifice of means for ends of dubious worth. Yarvi says to Koll - now his apprentice, at one point, “A blade in the right hands can be a righteous tool.” And Koll responds, “Who decides whose hands are right?”Skifr comes to join the group fighting the High King after Grandmother Wexen arranged to burn Skifr’s house and kill her family, and, critically, she brings the coalition “elf-weapons” or guns, “forged before the breaking of God.”The series ends with at least temporary peace on The Shattered Sea. But as for who the winners and losers are, that is something the reader will have to decide.Discussion: There are so many memorable passages in this book, as when Brand is expressing his feelings for Thorn:“‘She surely can cook a fight from the most peaceful ingredients. But nothing worth doing is easy. I love her in spite of it. I love her because of it. I love her.”Brand and Thorn’s relationship is echoed in that of Brand’s sister Rin and Koll, who, whenever he thinks about a characteristic of Rin, thinks, “He loved that about her.” Koll tells Rin:“‘What makes a woman beautiful to me isn’t her blood or her clothes but what she can do. I like a woman with strong hands who isn’t afraid of sweat or hard work or anything else. I like a woman with pride, and ambition, and quick wit, and high skill.’ Just words, maybe, but he meant them. Or half-meant them, anyway.”In fact, Koll is much like Brand - too much so, it seems, just as his relationship with Rin is a bit too reminiscent of that of Brand and Thorn. But the four characters are very likable, and their inherent goodness and relationships based on honesty is a welcome contrast to the duplicity of most of the other relationships in the story.Skara says to her minister:“I used to think the world had heroes in it. But the world is full of monsters. . . . Perhaps the best we can hope for is to have the most terrible of them on our side.”Indeed, overarching all other themes is that of the nature of morality, and good versus evil. Yarvi has sworn vengeance. Skara has sworn vengeance. Skifr wants vengeance. …whatever means to an end. But will it end? And where and how will it end?Were the elves like us, Koll asks Skifr?“Terribly like and terribly unlike,” said Skifr. . . . They were far wiser, more numerous, more powerful than us. But, just like us, the more powerful they became the more powerful they wished to become. Like men, the elves had holes in them that could never be filled. All of this . . . ‘ And Skifr spread her arms wide to the mighty ruins, her cloak of rags billowing in the restless breeze. ‘All of this could not satisfy them. They were just as envious, ruthless and ambitious as us. Just as greedy.” She raised one long arm, one long hand, one long finger to point . . . ‘It is their greed that destroyed them. . . .”Evaluation: This is a gritty, realistic cautionary tale as well as a sweeping fantasy saga that, in spite of some quibbles, I am terribly sad to see ended. (There is, one might note, plenty of opportunity for a continuation of the story should Abercrombie choose to do so.) For those dismayed by the corrupting effects of war and/or power, this story won't make you feel any better. It contains echoes of both "Hamlet" and "Macbeth" with characters as memorable. The behavior of my favorite character disappointed me, but life isn’t perfect, nor are people - even in fantasies, or maybe especially in fantasies.I would not rate this third book as highly as the other two, but in combination, the series is outstanding.

Half a War by Joe Abercrombie is the concluding volume in the Shattered Sea trilogy, and what a conclusion it is! This review will contain spoilers for the previous two volumes in the series if you haven’t read them yet, so consider yourself warned.Joe Abercrombie has written a great series in the Shattered Sea trilogy, and while Half a War is a very good book, the series as a whole is even greater than the sum of its parts. While characters continue from book to book, the focus shifts to a new character in each book. Half a King introduces Yarvi, Half a World introduces Brand and Thorn Bathu (love her!), and Half a War introduces us to Princess Skara. Each of these characters makes a journey from the beginning of the book to the end, at least spiritually, but it is Yarvi who takes the greatest journey from the beginning of the series to the end.Yarvi was always wise and “a deep cunning man”, yet the events in the first book removed whatever naivety remained and set him on a course of vengeance that isn’t complete until the final pages of the last book. The magnitude of his actions and their consequences hits him and you like a load of bricks. Even a deep cunning man cannot foresee every twist and turn of a complicated plan. Half a War brings to fruition the conflict with Grandmother Wexen and the High King. Villain Bright Yilling is chillingly ruthless and frighteningly confident making him a fitting counterpoint for the coming of age Princess Skara, who balances her own cunning with a desire to do good and protect her people. The only character I really didn’t care for in this book, and the series for that matter, was Skara’s erstwhile love interest Raith. I never took him seriously and he never really seemed to have a purpose. His was the only character journey that I didn’t really buy.Besides the main characters, a number of secondary characters are well written and interesting in their own rights. One of the things that sets this series apart is the sheer volume of interesting and complex characters. Not everyone makes it out alive and every victory comes with a cost. The characters at the end of the book are not the same as the ones at the beginning, and you feel their pain. Yarvi in particular has an objective in mind from the very beginning, but the ruthlessness and the sacrifice with which he pursues it isn’t fully revealed until the very end.The world-building and plot of this book and this series are interesting, but it is all in service of the characters. And I absolutely loved these characters, warts and all. I read the first book in the series and listened to the audio version of the last two. If you want a real treat, listen to John Keating’s narration of these audiobooks. He does an amazing job bringing these characters to life. The character voices are distinctive and entertaining. One of the best jobs of narration I’ve listened to. I highly recommend this book and this series. I was fortunate to receive an advance copy of this book.

One of the few endings that I liked. The book 3 of shaterred sea series is the best amongst them. Full of warrior battlefields and mind battlefields. Deep cunning minister Yarvi and queen Skara use their mind to win a war with and against each other meanwhile King Util, Gorm and their blood thirst warriors do the war itself. Father Of Peace doesn't have a place where Mother of War has its wings all over the sea.

Audiobook review:I received this book from the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program for free in exchange for an honest review.This was my first audio in this series. I read the books prior to this one. Now that I did this one on audio, I can say if John Keating does the others, try it on audio. I love his accent and how he brings the characters to life. I loved his brogue and how he changed them for the characters. It was easy to slip into this world with his narration. Also, while I'm on the subject. Do NOT skip books. Read (or listen) to them in order. It is fantasy and that genre is hard to skip around in a series.This probably wasn't the strongest book in the series. That may be due to the fact it was more political than the others. Half a war is about the politics and strategy that goes on behind the war so it is no surprise that it was more heavily politic. However, if you are worried that it does not have action, no worries. It still is war and so there is action everywhere. The story also focuses on Skara and those around her and I found that I really liked her character. She was not strong but cunning even though she was only 17 and lost everyone and everything she knew in one night.I think my biggest niggle is how the secondary characters were handled. While primary characters in other books become secondary in the next, we still remember our love for these characters. I didn't like that they were handled with carelessness and when we lose one of them, the other characters are affected but it still felt as if it was just a mention and not a major change. Perhaps the author gives the proper due to the impact is has on the game, but not how it impacts us as readers.I give this audio 3 1/2 stars. I really think that the narrator really sold me the story in this book. There are some big changes to some beloved characters and I wanted it to have a bigger impact in the book as a whole. I was not fond of how the secondary characters were portrayed. I did love Skara and Raith's story even if it didn't quite go as expected. I highly recommend this on audio and might have to revisit it all on audio. I recommend it to those that enjoy fantasy with magic.

Today I finished listening to the final installment in the most amazing trilogy. I don't even know where to begin so pardon me if I ramble.First off, this is the audio version of the Shattered Sea trilogy by Joe Abercrombie. Until I had the unprecedented good fortune to be selected as a recipient in the Early Reviewers program, I had never heard of the author. Based on my experience with this trilogy, I have been singing Abercrombie's praises to anyone I find browsing the SciFi/Fantasy section of my store. He is a solid writer. His characters have substance. They are complex and they grow throughout the series, sometimes becoming nearly unrecognizable as they develop. (more later)