Genre Character of the week, Prince Yarvi

Looking back over the last few month's worth of posts, I realized that I'd dropped one of my favourite entries on this blog, my "Genre Character of the Week" posts.  So today I decided to make good on a promise I made a little over three years ago and check out Joe Abercrombie's novel Half a King.

The novel focuses on prince Yarvi, the second son of a King and destined to become a Minister (sort of a priest/adviser/healer), when the sudden deaths of both his father and older brother lead him to the throne.

The book is a pretty great story of a young boy becoming a man and although it definitely felt a little pulp-y (which is fine as I like pulp fiction), the intriguing thing for me was the intriguing grey scale of morality and ethics in the book - no one is entirely good or evil and as we see the world through Yarvi's eyes, it is an exceptional education that we are taken through.

The book is the first of a trilogy, and it works to both guarantee I'll finish the rest as well as checking out the other books by the author.

I guess listening to a random guy on a bench a couple years ago can pay off.