Showing posts with label kj parker. Show all posts
Showing posts with label kj parker. Show all posts
Order Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City over HERE
AUTHOR INFORMATION: K.J. Parker is a pseudonym for Tom Holt. According to the biographical notes in some of Parker's books, Parker has previously worked in law, journalism, and numismatics, and now writes and makes things out of wood and metal. It is also claimed that Parker is married to a solicitor and now lives in southern England. According to an autobiographical note, Parker was raised in rural Vermont, a lifestyle which influenced Parker's work.
FORMAT: Orbit published How to Rule an Empire and Get Away with It in August 2020 as a second book of The Siege series. It works as a standalone. The book is written in the first-person POV (via Notker) and counts 354 pages.
OVERVIEW: I don’t have to convince Parker’s fans to buy his books; they’ll do it anyway - even his weaker books beat most of the low fantasy published nowadays. How to Rule the Empire and Get Away With It is a loose sequel to Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City, but it works as a standalone. And it’s great.
Notker, a cynic, actor, and playwright has a knack for impersonating influential people. His acting skills and physique allow him to win the audience and make a living. Things get complicated when the enemy’s trebuchet kills Lysimachus, a venerated war hero. Without him, the city is doomed. It turns out Notker resembles him. A bit. He doesn’t have scars, and he dislikes blood and violence, but who cares. Definitely not the conspirators who coerce him into impersonating the hero.
Notker’s ex-girlfriend, Hodda, gets caught up in intrigue as well. To make matters more interesting, she used to date the real Lysimachus. Not to mention other influential figures. The pair gets tangled in a web of lies, and things escalate quickly. The Senate appoints Notker as Emperor and wants him to lead the war against King Ogus and his ruthless warriors. While Hodda plays an important role in the story, we stay in Notker’s head and POV. Like most of Parker’s protagonists, he’s no hero:
Me, I don’t care about the bad guys, so long as they keep the hell away from me. When they get too close in my face, I tell lies and run away. That means I’ll never be a hero, but I don’t mind that. I do character parts and impersonations.
Notker’s sardonic voice, and his cynically philosophical asides about life, love, and politics, charmed me. Despite his shortcomings, Notker makes do. He uses his wit and resources to ensure an exciting and surprising finale. I love Parker's use of tight first-person narration. It always makes me laugh, think, and brood over the condition of humanity.
Ah, the people. My countrymen, my fellow citizens, my brothers. Mind you, some of them are all right, when you get to know them. But a lot of them aren’t; and here’s a funny thing, because when you mix them together, the ones that are all right and the ones that aren’t, as often as not the resulting blend is far worse than the sum of its parts. Greedier, more cowardly, more stupid.
Parker conveys backstories through instant immersion into the everyday life of Notker, an actor turned Emperor trying to save the day against impossible odds. He has no illusions about his countrymen, but he’ll try to help them, anyway.
Nothing changes more often, more rapidly or more radically than the past. Yesterday’s heroes are today’s villains. Yesterday’s eternal truths are today’s exploded myths. Yesterday’s right is today’s wrong, yesterday’s good is today’s evil. And tomorrow it’ll all be one hundred and eighty degrees different, on that you can rely.
Much as I enjoyed Sixteen Ways to Defend The Walled City, I liked How to Rule an Empire and Get Away with It more. It feels tighter and Notker is easier to like than Orhan, even if there are a few moments where pacing could be improved. Still, this is a fantastic novel. Parker provides an immersive story with clever twists and uncomfortable truths about human nature and society in elegant yet utterly unpretentious prose.
One could argue that whole of Parker's oeuvre has the same general feel. That he writes only one character with the same fatalistic but humorous outlook on life. And yet, as a writer, he gets away with it because he does it so well and he always offers unexpected twists. How to Rule an Empire and Get Away with It is darkly funny and cheerfully horrific and I had a great time reading it.
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Official Author Website
Order Fortune's Fool over HERE (US) and HERE (UK)
OFFICIAL AUTHOR INFORMATION: Having worked in journalism and the law, K. J. Parker now writes and makes things out of wood and metal.
FORMAT/INFO: Prosper's Demon is 112 pages long. The book is currently available in e-book and paperback format. It was self-published by Tor on January 28, 2019. Cover art by
CLASSIFICATION: Epic fantasy, Romantic fantasy
I have an idea you aren’t going to like me very much. That may prove to be the only thing we’ll have in common, so let’s make the most of it. I do terrible things.
KJ Parker has mastered the art of writing short fiction. With instantly recognizable voice, unreliable narration and humorously cynical tone, he makes me laugh, think, and loathe his protagonists.
In Prosper’s Demon the unnamed narrator can spot demons and communicate with them. The church has authorized him to evict them from their human hosts. While keeping the host healthy should be his priority, it means little to him. The truth is, he doesn’t give a damn about his fellow human beings and he knows scruples only from theory. Demons call him an evil lunatic and that should tell you everything you need to know about him.
Demons don’t die. They change hosts. When a demon with whom the narrator has a grudge takes over a royal child, things get complicated. Especially that a royal tutor and genius, Prosper of Schanz, may be inhabited by a demon as well. The narrator will have to make a difficult choice - expelling the demon will deprive the world of more masterworks. And if the narrator believes in anything, it's in genius.
We live in a miserable world, where the best we can honestly hope for is that one empty, meaningless day will follow another without things getting actively worse. (...)only two things live forever, the instruments of darkness and works of genius.
At 116 pages, it packs much more of everything than most novels succeed in 500 pages. KJ Parker is brilliant and Prosper's Demon proves he's still in prime form.
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