[Review] Prince of Thorns by Mark Lawrence

Wednesday, July 03, 2013 K.Z. Freeman 0 Comments

I don't like to get angry. It makes me angry.

Reasons why I hate Mark Lawrence:

1. He wrote the best dark fantasy book there ever was.
2. He created the best character there ever was in dark fantasy.

And there you have it. These two reasons are, in short, why I hate hate hate Mark Lawrence. There, I've said it and I don't want to take it back.

Mabberton burned well. All the villages burned well that summer. Makin called it a hot bastard of a summer, too mean to give out rain, and he wasn't wrong. Dust rose behind us when we rode in; smoke when we rode out.

In a nutshell, the above paragraph describes well the gritty world of Prince Honorous Jorg Ancrath, aka the Mad Prince, aka all the other nicknames people whisper of him behind his back.

His story unfolds along with a "merry" group of bandits called Brothers as they forge a bloody path through Empire. But all is not as it seems with young Jorg. He has ambitions, you see, people to kill and vengeance to exact, and that's what this story is. A tale of vengeance of a young boy who has seen his mother and younger brother brutally murdered -- sold by his own father. A tale of a broken young boy who thinks he has the world by the balls.

I had me a hollow ache behind my eyes. The kind that gets people killed.