Since the a large amount of us around the world are under lock down it is no secret that the most of us are enjoying more art then we have perhaps in are whole lives. During this time I'd like to make some recommendations of some fantastic books, shows, films, albums, visual arts and video games for those who are interested in that type of thing.
I'd like to start off with a novel called "The Blade Itself" by Joe Abercrombie.
This is the first book in an epic fantasy trilogy that had a massive impact on me not just as a writer but as a person and visual artist as well (I am a practitioner of sculpture).
Joe Abercrombie really knows how to weave visuals like magic. His world is so lively, so vivid, so colorful in places like the palace courtyards and gardens. Then dreary and glum in the slums and the docks to the point that I often thought I could smell the rot in the wood and feel the damp on my skin from the cold, sick air that hangs over that wicked place where dark dealing are done.
The way the Joe writes a battle is unbeaten as far as I am concerned. Abercrombie gets the reader into his character's heads in a manner that is nothing short of spell work. You feel the rattle of swords, the claustrophobia of fighting pressed between hundreds and hundreds of bodies as dread and desolation close in, you feel the ache of one man's crippled leg as he takes his pain staking steps up endless stairs in evil towers home to dark orders. You feel the pounding of your heart as Logan Nine Fingers, fights that one last fight that never seems to be his last, or the roof top chase scene that has the intensity of a Jason Bourne movie some how generated from the pages of a fantasy novel.
Inside this epic of war and wizardry, is laced the sharpest humor in a fantasy series matched only by the Witcher, in my opinion. Joe Abercrombie's First Law trilogy, which The Blade Itself is the first installment of is for anyone who thinks they might be interested in seeing what would happen if writer-director Guy Richie (Snatch, Sherlock Holmes a Game of Shadows, Rock'N'Rolla) had a go at penning Game of Thrones. There is an amazingly diverse cast of characters all with there own charms and fatal flaws and the experience is over all thrilling, thoughtful and above all epic.
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