Half the World

This middle volume was my favourite of Joe Abercrombie's Shattered Seas trilogy. I thought the intertwined stories of Thorn and Brand worked very well together, and Thorn in particular is one of Abercrombie's trademark excellent characters.

Yarvi, the hero of the first book, is relegated to a background role as the story of the continuing political crisis moves to a new part of the world. This book stands complete as Thorn and Brand's tale, while still forming part of a larger story about their home country and its precarious place in the world.

The whole trilogy is great fun - Viking-inspired action fantasy pitched a bit younger than Abercrombie's First Law fiction - and this book is, for me, the strongest of the three.