Nick Bryan

Reviews

BEST OF 2014 – Comics

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Originally, this summary of 2014’s comics-reading was going to share space with the books, but those damn prose-hives ended up taking up so much space that I let them have the entire post. So now, that means I could either not list my favourite comics of 2014 or give them an entire post to themselves.

I think it’s obvious which way I was going to go. If you want to know what I was reading a year ago, here’s the post for that. Now, onwards back into the comics of 2014, a year where my comic book consumption came dangerously close to being defined by a single app…

Unlimited Power!

My 30th birthday was in late March, and my main presents were a tablet and a Marvel Unlimited subscription. Marvel Unlimited, in case you missed it (as it isn’t that well promoted), is a Netflix-esque service providing infinite on-demand access to a huge range of Marvel comic books for a regular subscription fee. It’s updated every Monday with another week of books, so you do effectively get the entire line, albeit six months behind the new stuff.

It’s a great deal, especially at the current price, even if the app has some teething moments at times. I’m on iOS, so don’t know how good the Android version is. Works especially well if you, like me, are interested in a wide variety of Marvel series and more or less switched to collected editions a while back, so don’t mind being six months off the pace.

However, with this much stuff available, it is possible to get Marvel-fatigued. You read Unlimited for hours, because it’s there, and you start to wonder if there’s a world outside Spider-Hulk-X-Iron-Man. I didn’t even realise it was possible to forget Batman nowadays, but at times, I came close.

Anyway. Most of the comics I read during my inaugural nine months on Unlimited ended up being X-Men series. I’ve always stopped myself fully buying into the mutants until now – there are just so many of them and money is not abundant. Still, with a never-ending subscription, why not?

So I caught up on a few core series, using the Schism storyline as an entry point, and it was there that I discovered Jason Aaron and various artists’ Wolverine & The X-Men. Now, everyone, this comic is amazing. Fun, breezy tone, bright, clear, charming art, a light touch and an amazing ability to make you laugh, cry and even feel genuine hope. A reader who takes their mutants Deadly Seriously might find the silliness a turn-off, but as a newcomer who hasn’t read X-Men regularly since Grant Morrison left, this was absolutely the charm offensive they needed to get me back on-board.

(If you want dead serious mutants, I’m most of the way through Rick Remender’s Uncanny X-Force just now, and it’s a proper-hardcore-action-movie series. Personally, I prefer a bit more charm, but I can’t say this particular book doesn’t pull off the stern style.)

The current runs on All-New X-Men and Uncanny X-Men, by Brian Michael Bendis, are also doing good stuff. I read a lot of the Bendis Avengers run, and it too-often felt like the Avengers weren’t soapy enough for him, a whole book revolving around superhero action didn’t play to his strengths. Well, the X-Men are plenty soapy, he’s been teamed up with some excellent artists (Stuart Immonen rarely does wrong), and the result is two smooth, solid series. Not as good as his still-ongoing brilliant run on Ultimate Spider-Man, but few things are.

I also just now read the entire of Peter David’s 2000s run on X-Factor, up to the end of the Madrox series a year or two back. This was absolutely what I want from an X-Men comic (and serialised fiction in general): balancing a huge cast of clearly defined characters, giving everyone their moment without sacrificing plot movement. Suffered sometimes from inconsistent art and the occasional supernatural storylines didn’t really grab me, but still good.

Lastly in our Unlimited-X-Men section, I read X-Men: Legacy, the recent reboot by Si Spurrier, Tan Eng Huat and other artists. Starring lesser-known mutant Legion (ostracised son of Professor Xavier), Legacy takes an indepth look at both the X-Men premise (from the main character’s slightly bitter POV) and Legion’s own towering cosmic powers, combined with serious mental health issues. It’s a very odd series, I imagine it won’t be for everyone, but Spurrier, Huat and co did something really unique here, very strange, compelling and ultimately lovely. Worth a look.

Gillen Division

After that epic X-section, I hope you see what I mean about kinda being overwhelmed by Marvel comics. Marvel Unlimited – it’s a thrill, but perhaps ultimately a danger.

However, I did read some other publishers’ output this year. Most recently, I powered through all issues to date of Uber, the WW2 superpowers epic by Kieron Gillen, Caanan White and others.It would’ve been easy to collapse into sensationalism, but there’s clearly research and thought at work here, as well as ruthlessness. Gillen cleverly keeps much of the real-life horrors off-screen, reserving the nastiness for when his “tank-men” get busy.

White and the other artists are more than capable of realising both emotion during the conversations and gore when it oozes through. Highly recommended as long as you have the necessary strong stomach.

Also written by Gillen, I read Young Avengers and The Wicked & The Divine, his latest collaborations with Phonogram artist Jamie McKelvie. Both of them have been highly acclaimed from various quarters, but I must admit, Uber spoke to me a little more. Still, the craft experiments at work throughout these two series are fascinating – Gillen and McKelvie have worked together long enough to start playing around within their stories, and Young Avengers in particular features plenty of fun-gimmicks-are-fun moments that mesh beautifully with the teen aesthetic.

The Wicked & The Divine (which, disappointingly, they refuse to shorten as TWATD) perhaps speaks to a more passionate fannish persuasion than I possess – as this essay may reveal, I probably engage with creative works in a more ponderous fashion. Still, the straight-up cliffhangers, plot twists and fights are smoothly executed. TWATD may be the closest we’ve yet seen to Gillen/McKelvie doing a “mainstream” urban fantasy, albeit one tailored heavily to their interests. It has the cold open, the reveals, the shocks, and they make it all look effortless.

I’ve now written a fuckton of words and all I’ve covered are the X-Men and the work of one writer. Bloody hell. This is what happens when I hardly write any reviews all year, it just splurges.

Batman & Other Animal(man)s

Since I did a whole bit on Marvel earlier, let’s talk about DC. I re-read the Garth Ennis run on Hellblazer recently, but since I wrote a separate post on that earlier in the month, I won’t repeat myself here. It’s good, though.

Finally read the first two acts of the Grant Morrison run on Batman/Batman & Robin/Final Crisis, after a pleasingly-timed Comixology sale let me grab the whole thing. Like most Morrison comics, I finish a huge segment, stop and think “Okay, I may need to go back and read that again.” Still, this first read got me into the plot, and even with all the big stuff going on, Morrison always tells a good story with plenty of cool Batman moments to keep me invested. Looking forward to Batman Incorporated in 2015.

Also in the Morrison/DC segment, I finally read his Animal Man run, and it was great. Threaded the needle beautifully between straight superheroics and building the inevitable meta-strange breakdown at the end. Like all the best Morrison work, the series never lost its grip on human feelings throughout all that, complemented with great storytelling by Chas Troug and other artists.

We may finally be coming into the closing straight of this year’s best comics – the problem is, I almost exclusively read stuff I’ve seen emphatically recommended, so it’s all good and not much can be excluded from these lists. Here are some final bullet points:

  • Caught up on Chew the other morning, and bloody hell, that’s one hell of a ramp-up to the last few storylines of the series. Still great execution by Layman/Guillory, and unlike many five-year comic runs, hasn’t lost momentum.
  • Ms Marvel is just as likable and fun as everyone says, and it’s brilliant to have Adrian Alphona back doing regular comic art again.
  • From a similar generation: Loki: Agent Of Asgard is intruiging and readable, especially worth checking out if you badly miss Gillen’s Journey Into Mystery.
  • Trees by Warren Ellis and Jason Howard is a slow burn but hard to look away from. Between this and the fun storytelling experiments in his Moon Knight issues with Declan Shalvey, this has been a great year for Ellis, and his mostly-weekly email newsletter Orbital Operations is a good read as well.

Okay. Phew. I think I’m done with comics for 2014 at last, hopefully you found something interesting in that piece and if not, well, I still enjoyed writing it, so never mind

Coming soon: the season finale of the 2014 round-up posts… the Top Ten TV.

BEST OF 2014 – Books

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My original plan, as threatened in last week’s podcast/film/music summary, was to dig into my favourite books and comics of the year in this single post. However, due to circumstances beyond my control (me banging on for too long), I am going to leave this one with just the books and return to the comics at a later date. Probably quite a soon later date, as I still harbour the ambition of getting these blog posts out before 2014 itself ends, and I still gotta do the TV as well.

If you want to see how my tastes have evolved, you can consult the 2013 equivalent of this blog post. For now, though, let’s dig into the best printed prose stories of the year, most of which I read digitally.

YA – Why, eh?

My major shift in books-direction this year was to start reading YA, because I’ve begun to socialise with a lot of YA-likers and also (inevitably) started to wonder if I could write it myself. So, if anyone else wants a good entry point, I’ll lay out the best of my mostly-scifi/fantasy sampling.

I’ve read The City’s Son and The Glass Republic by Tom Pollock, the first two in his Skyscraper Throne trilogy set in a fantastical London. Although the first one is a strong opening adventure that set out a potentially fascinating world, the second was a year-highlight, a genuinely excellent emotional journey through cool concepts that I’d recommend to anyone. Must track down the third one. (By which I mean: I’ll buy it when it gets cheaper on Kindle.)

Elsewhere in the YA exploration, Pantomime by Laura Lam is a lovely, fragile book about Micah Grey, a teen coming to terms with his own identity under confusing circumstances – and also set in a circus. Control by Kim Curran is the sequel to her alternate-reality-wrangling scifi book Shift, and in a similar way to the Tom Pollock series, the first one does some interesting world building, but the second is the one which really made me pay attention. Happily, the third and final part is coming soon.

Also read The Curse Workers trilogy by Holly Black, about magical con-men, and although they never quite top the excellent first book, it’s all an exciting adventure.

At the younger end of the target-age spectrum, but also among the most excellent: Murder Most Unladylike by Robin Stevens is a mega-likable school detective story and Close Your Pretty Eyes by Sally Nicholls is beautifully characterised and creepy. Very creepy.

Aged To Perfection

I’m going to creep back towards adult novels now, via the bridging method of fantasy author Joe Abercrombie. I read the last two books in his adult trilogy The First Law, as well as his new YA book Half A King this year and all were great. The biting wit and intense adventure are strong across the board.

Tore through The Cormorant, the most recent in Chuck Wendig’s Miriam Black supernatural crime series too, and it’s the best one yet. The first two were fun adventures, but this third part was blow-me-away good, and I’m pleased to hear it should be continuing this year with Thunderbird. His urban fantasy book The Blue Blazes was fun too.

I also read Feed by Mira Grant (aka Seanan McGuire) and although I’ve not read her work before, I did enjoy the combination of genuinely creepy horror plotting and someone writing about the internet/blogging in a way that suggests they actually understand it. All too rare.

Getting into sundry other territory now, I also liked:

  • The Mad Scientist’s Daughter, a sweet robot-romance by Cassandra Rose Clarke
  • Fight Or Flight by Chele Cooke, the second in her Out Of Orbit scifi adventure series
  • Deadlines, a weekly newspaper-crime serialised thriller by Chris Brosnahan
  • Gun Machine, a heavily armed crime novel by noted comic writer Warren Ellis
  • Mayhem, Jack-The-Ripper-esque gritty crime by Sarah Pinborough.

Phew. I read a lot of books this year, and that was just over a third of them.

I refrained from listing my own book, as that seemed like supreme arrogance, but if you want to see The Girl Who Tweeted Wolf on a similar list, you can head on over to Nimbus Space here. Just popping that in. Coming soon: the comics!

BEST OF 2014 – Podcasts, Films, Music

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Right, 2014 is one week and a few Christmas crackers away from ending, so it’s time for bloggers to work out their Favourite [THING] Of [YEAR] lists. I am no exception, especially as I’ve hardly reviewed anything for ages and kinda miss it.

So, exactly as I did last year, I’ve broken my enjoyment down into a series of headings. In this first effort, we’ll tackle the podcasts, movies and music. One of those segments will be much, much longer than the other two.

Podcasts

Last year’s favourite podcasts, The Bugle and House To Astonish, both experienced erratic schedules in 2014, due to John Oliver’s new TV show and a presenter having a baby respectively. I think this proves conclusively the destructive nature of my love. (Although The Bugle produced some excellent episodes in the last few weeks, since afore-mentioned TV show went off air.)

Still – this clears the way for some newcomers on the scene. Firstly, yes everyone, I too listened to Serial, and quite enjoyed it. Sagged a bit in the middle for me, but I thought they provided a more convincing non-ending than I ever expected them to. I’ve watched true-crime-based films and documentaries before and judged Serial as another of that genre, albeit in a new medium. Seemed to stand up well.

Best newcomer for me personally, though, was Rachel And Miles X-Plain The X-Men. If a charming, funny, affectionately-poking-fun look back at the X-Men’s labyrinthine comic book history appeals to you, this podcast nails the pitch. So good, I signed up for their Patreon campaign. Their weekly YouTube reviews of current X-Men books are worth watching too.

Over in the weird-comedy section, the very, very funny ManBuyCow podcast put out the latter half of their second series at the start of 2014, hopefully 2015 will see series 3. The theme tune alone is worth listening for.Lastly, and most topically, both Tea and Jeopardy (the silly-but-fun scifi/fantasy books discussion show with Emma Newman) and Daniel Ruiz Tizon (South London’s master of melancholy) put out daily Advent Calendar shows during December, and both have been great in their own ways, exploring festivity and helping us all build towards Christmas

.I also attended the recording of the Daniel Ruiz Tizon Is Available Bumper Christmas Annual last night, wrapping up a good year for him as he took his show from podcast to Resonance FM, but kept on chronicling the small victories and defeats that band together to make up our lives. You might be able to hear me laughing in the background throughout the annual and saying something about Doctor Who towards the end. Looking forward to seeing what Daniel does in 2015.

Movies

Okay, this is going to be short, especially if we restrain it to viewed films released during 2014. It’s basically just the two Marvel movies (Guardians of the Galaxy and Captain America: The Winter Soldier) and The Lego Movie, all of which were very good, broad adventures with a unique flavour.

If I had to put them in an order, I’d say Guardians just edges out Lego for the top spot, but if you’ve any interest in those films and haven’t yet seen them, definitely rectify that. They all entertain and emote with balanced skill.

I also caught up on some late-2013 movies recently: Frozen and The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, both of which were enjoyable, engrossing adventures. Catching Fire perhaps suffers a little from middle-of-trilogy-setting-up-for-last one syndrome, but they did inherit that issue from the book.

Frozen, meanwhile, aside from that very catchy song, is almost painfully likable and does interesting things with standard Disney tropes. Could’ve maybe used a few more memorable songs aside from Let It Go, but the story still held me regardless.

Music

I’ve mostly tuned out of current music, but I bought a few current releases this year – new Elbow album The Taking Off And Landing Of Everything was definitely much better than their last one, including a few songs that made me feel properly sad/uplifted as only they can.

I also listened to the new Taylor Swift album 1989, mostly to see what the fuss was about, and found it a fun hour of pop. After a few stern Twitter recommendations, I went back and tried Red, her previous one, and yes, that’s the country-catchy stuff. It stayed on rotation much longer.

New Weezer album Everything Will Be Alright In The End turned out to be an addictive collection of fun-but-not-stupid indie-rock, and no-one was more surprised than the band’s own fanbase. If you used to like Weezer and drifted away, the new one strikes a good balance between memorable choruses and genuine emotion. I especially like the songs Cleopatra and Da Vinci, but other people have different favourites, and it’s probably a good sign that there are enough high quality songs on the record for these arguments to exist.

Also played Weird Al Yankovic’s Mandatory Fun for a while to great enjoyment, although like many parody albums, it got old eventually.

Lastly, as with the movies, I also discovered some 2013 music belatedly – primarily CHVRCHES album The Bones Of What You Believe and Nocturnes by Little Boots. Both smooth, driving, haunting music and great for writing to, I’ve found. There’s a song on The Bones Of What You Believe that very much is the theme song of the fantasy novel I’ve just finished, to me. And I hardly ever have those kind of thoughts.

Right – probably two more posts to follow in this series, Books & Comics and Top Ten TV, same as last year. I’ll attempt to get both out before 2014 dies, although one of them may slip and I can only apologise if so. Gotta see the last episodes of Doctor Who, Agents of SHIELD and Homeland before I can do TV, for starters.

Hellblazer by Garth Ennis – Classic Constantine Contemplations

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Inspired by the launch of that Constantine TV show, Comixology recently held a generous sale on Hellblazer, the original for-mature-readers John Constantine series. I took this opportunity to finally read in order the entire Garth Ennis-written run on that title, the work that broke Ennis into American comics and first teamed him with Steve Dillon, with whom he’d later create Preacher.

For the uninitiated – Hellblazer is a horror comic about John Constantine, trenchcoated modern-day wizard antihero, confronting supernatural/magical unpleasatness in a modern setting. He was created during Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing stories, before spinning off into own series after fans enjoyed his manipulative schemes and wry British comments.

Hellblazer distinguished itself from other urban fantasy via particular emphasis on straight-up awful horrific moments and a tendency to reference real modern-day British issues rather than just the affairs of its own fictional universe, all of which made it a massive cult hit.

Long time ago, when we were young…

Now – I’ve only read Ennis’ run in segmented chunks before, mostly due to DC/Vertigo’s until-recently-quite-shitty approach to reprinting Hellblazer. The original issues came way before every single comic book got a collected edition as a matter of course, but thanks to Ennis/Dillon’s later success, there was a half-arsed attempt to collect this early collaboration. Sadly, these had no helpful volume numbering and an annoying habit of skipping non-Dillon issues.

I, meanwhile, was a teenager in a suburban-Essex library where neither Google nor Wikipedia had emerged yet. Not a chance in hell(blazer). But DC have, at last, started collecting early Hellblazer in easy-to-follow numbered volumes. On the down side, they’ve cancelled the monthly comic and relaunched it as the no-longer-so-horrific all-ages Constantine series, but… y’know, it’s something.

Stories within stories

John Constantine is sad, he is so very sad

Not getting into big spoilers, the ongoing storylines of Garth Ennis’ Hellblazer hinge on two points:

  1. In the first (very well-regarded and good) storyline Dangerous Habits, John discovers he’s dying of lung cancer from his years of smoking. Escaping that certain death requires such a big, risky deal, he ends up dealing with the repurcussions for the rest of the run, right up to the climax.
  2. Constantine finds himself in an unusually healthy and normal relationship with Kit, a dead friend’s ex, to whom he makes a lot of promises about not fucking it up by getting in deep with magic. These prove difficult to keep, especially with the aftermath of that first point hanging over him.

As is the joy of monthly comics, there are a lot of diversions into horror vignettes along the way. Still, the Ennis run broadly reads as one big novel covering those two interweaving stories. Scattered references to past Hellblazer storylines, but you can basically read it as a complete unit in itself. It’s fine. God knows I only knew the bare-bones basics when I started, and I’ve still not read that much other Hellblazer now.

The Litany

I first kinda-sorta read chunks of this run in my late teens, and re-reading it now, a lot of it came lumbering out of my past recollections. I didn’t realise to what extent I’d half-absorbed it, nor how much I’d failed to understand some of the broader themes – especially the many references to political and social issues of the time.

I’ll be the first to admit, I’m still not shit-hot on the tensions of 80s-90s Britain, but the ideas about race and class in these Hellblazer issues shot straight over never-left-suburbia teenage Nick’s head. Good to see all this time reading liberal Twitter has changed something in me.

It’s interesting reading this as an early Garth Ennis work, spotting some of the tools he’d later become extremely known for – pontifications on self-destruction and the effects of extreme actions; the enduring nature of male friendship; crowbarring a war story into an unrelated plot; creating strong and likable relationships, then putting them under extreme pressure.

It also features a predilection towards demons delivering rather long, ponderous and flowery monologues, a tendency Ennis thankfully dialled down in later works – Preacher, in particular, featured a lot of heavenly beings, but less of their unvarnished soliloquies.

Also, it’s so easy to think of Hellblazer as a forerunner to other tortured urban fantasy antiheroes, you forget how much more genuine horror there was, how many times Constantine was faced with magic not just as a vague swirly force, but a really on-the-nose, awful esclation of something wrong with the real world. There’s not as much extrapolating through metaphor, far less excuse to think, actually, this isn’t really happening. Because a lot of it clearly is, and that’s when this book really works. The visceral stuff.

Ennis was, I gather, pretty young when he wrote this, and he’s definitely youthfully angry about some stuff. Another character type Ennis always writes well, and often applies to the many forces that displease him: idiots bringing about their own doom.

I’m a sucker for Dillon’s art after growing up on Preacher, and he’s great for this kind of stuff, creating a grounded real world around Constantine – a plausibility that only makes it more brutal when fucking horrible magic hits home. William Simpson, the other main artist involved, is excellent too – his work carries a washed-out, ghostly feel, bringing out the End-Of-The-Line-Mate sense permeating Dangerous Habits.

Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t all a grim journey into the heart of darkness – yes, things inevitably get bad before the big showdown, but before that, in order to make us care about JC and chums, there’s a lot of real human warmth in there. Yet another Ennis trick – writing dialogue that actually feels like human conversation rather than… well, like dialogue. Look, here’s John talking to a rabbit.

Whereas today, on the other hand…

The weirdest part about reading this book again, to be honest, is realising how much it’s influenced me. Much like when I revisited Quantum & Woody a while back, this is a series that got to me young, even if always as a supplement to Preacher, and a lot of the lingering regret and tone of world-weariness does come up in my work. I look at John Hobson (of Hobson & Choi fame) after this re-read and think, actually, there’s a bit of the Ennis Constantine in there. Only without the magic, obviously.

I’m also following the Constantine TV show, and I think one reason old-school Constantine fans aren’t all taking to it is a lack of the two points I mentioned that distinguish Hellblazer from standard urban fantasy: genuine horror and real world relevance. But on its own merits, it’s a reasonably entertaining pulpy supernatural antihero show, helped along by Matt Ryan being quite good as John himself (even if other characters can be a bit flat).

That, in summation, is every thought I had after re-reading the Garth Ennis Hellblazer run. Hope you enjoyed the piece. Do check out the comics in question if they sound appealing – they genuinely are quite good. The Ennis stuff is Hellblazer #41-83 plus a few specials, or volume 5-8 of the recent collected editions (only the last six issues of book 5 are by Ennis).

And if the comparisons with Constantine make you want to buy the first book in my Hobson & Choi series, I won’t discourage you from doing that either.Now, I might even try reading some other Hellblazer some time.

The Cuckoo’s Calling by Robert Galbraith (aka J.K. Rowling) – Thoughts On A Book

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Just finished reading The Cuckoo’s Calling, the first crime effort by J.K. Rowling, best known for being written under the pen name of Robert Galbraith and concealed for a short period. Eventually, of course, the truth emerged, and although the fun ended, sales went through the roof.

But plenty already written about that, and sequel The Silkworm was released recently with the unsecret identity still in place. I read The Cuckoo’s Calling as if it were a story (and in many ways, it is), how did it hold up? What thoughts did I have? (Some mild spoilers, though nothing explicit really.)

The Casual Cuckoo

First up, for anyone who found The Casual Vacancy a bit of a rambling polemic, this second adult effort is much more story-shaped. In fact, compared to her other work, it’s unusual how heavily it buys into and works within genre conventions.

Rowling/Galbraith does a good job of populating said story with strong characters and memorable personalities. With so many people under the Suspect category, each getting one or two scenes to shine, it helps having all be memorable and easy to define. Although, even with Rowling’s gift for the easy-to-place personality, I did feel a few tugs of “Wait, which one was that again?” by the end.

Because, yes, this book is very long. And I say this as someone who thought most of the Harry Potter books were a fair enough length. (Except Order of the Phoenix, that was ridiculous.)

The Doom Bar’s Calling

The mystery itself is a well-drawn, believable one, armed with fun twists and turns to keep us guessing. Maybe could’ve used a midway mega-twist to keep everyone excited through all that length, but the resolution remained satisfying.

Lead gumshoe Cormoran Strike gets plenty of depth and development, plus amusing drunk moments. He also drinks Doom Bar, a respectable ale.

Basically, it felt like many good origin-of-series stories (see also: the Guardians of the Galaxy movie and last weekend’s Doctor Who Capaldi debut) – focusing on introducing the lead character and putting them through a standard storyline, psyching us up for when they face a more terrifying threat next time.

And it did a decent job, although (again much like that Who episode), it probably didn’t need to be quite as long to achieve that. Definitely worth a look if you like J.K. Rowling or a good meat-and-potatoes murder mystery.

(And yes, I’m aware that this book does demonstrate a more-than-slight resemblance to my own Hobson & Choi books in the early chapters, although that does clear up in later days. The dangers of following the same genre-lines.)

The First Law trilogy by Joe Abercrombie – A Recommendation

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Joe Abercrombie - First Law Trilogy

I am self-publishing a book soon, so will be talking about that quite a lot. You can see all the details of that venture here, but to mix things up, I thought I’d recommend someone else’s books in this post.

To be specific: The Blade Itself, Before They Are Hanged and Last Argument of Kings, aka The First Law trilogy by Joe Abercrombie. It’s a fantasy trilogy, revolving around the politics, prejudices and (eventually) magic in a world not quite our own and it’s really good. I was recommended it whilst in the midst of Thrones-fever, fancying something else in the fantasy arena, and it really hit the spot – smart, character driven action with the fantastical elements playing around the edges, sometimes screaming into the forefront.

So since those who started reading the A Song Of Ice And Fire series with the TV show are probably finishing soon, I figured I’d point this out as a next step.

In fact, The First Law might even be a better bet for readers who enjoyed the Thrones TV series than the George R.R. Martin books themselves – it’s a short, accessible, witty read and with a conclusion that already exists.Although it is potentially even more depressing than Thrones at times – Abercrombie is LordGrimdark on Twitter, after all.

Anyway. It has a large, memorable cast tied together through clear threads, including the obligatory love-to-hate character in Inquisitor Glokta. He does all the worst things yet gets the best lines, as always. Although, to be honest, there are a few reluctant favourites to go around – I’d take another Logen Ninefingers book in a heartbeat.

There’s a little of the inevitable mid-trilogy sag in book two, but the big set-pieces in that book are so impressive that it hardly bothers you. Great work as a whole, hits the right balance of epic sweep whilst remaining rooted in character, and manages a three-dimensional universe without bogging down in detail. Abercrombie also writes a great fast, meaty fight scene.

And even better, there are three standalone books in the same setting to read next. Sadly, though, they seem to centre on characters outside of the primary ones from The First Law, and I loved those folks. Still be reading them though.

Oh, and Abercrombie also just released Half A King, the well-reviewed first chapter in a whole new series. Excellent.