Paul reviewed Sixteen ways to Defend a walled City by K. J. Parker
Review of 'Sixteen ways to Defend a walled City' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
A very mixed bag for me. On the plus side, the main character is an engineer who is not particularly attractive or muscular, unlike a lot of fantasy heroes. There are plenty of funny moments, and the twists and turns of how each new threat has to be dealt with are enjoyable (and made me wonder if the author played Rome Total War in his youth). The story was easy to follow and kept my attention, and didn’t feel like something I had to plow through because the book club deadline was approaching.
On the downside, the author either can’t or won’t write female characters. The three women we are introduced to aren’t worthy of being called characters, given that they are defined largely by their attractiveness to the main character and how attracted they are to him in turn. This was published in 2019, and if you can’t get …
A very mixed bag for me. On the plus side, the main character is an engineer who is not particularly attractive or muscular, unlike a lot of fantasy heroes. There are plenty of funny moments, and the twists and turns of how each new threat has to be dealt with are enjoyable (and made me wonder if the author played Rome Total War in his youth). The story was easy to follow and kept my attention, and didn’t feel like something I had to plow through because the book club deadline was approaching.
On the downside, the author either can’t or won’t write female characters. The three women we are introduced to aren’t worthy of being called characters, given that they are defined largely by their attractiveness to the main character and how attracted they are to him in turn. This was published in 2019, and if you can’t get your head around female characters by now then either don’t write them or don’t write at all.
As for labelling the characters based on their skin colour, if I was being generous I’d say that maybe the author was trying to make some kind of point here about racism, but if that’s the case it’s badly done and wildly misses the mark.
Overall, 3 stars because it was an enjoyable read, but I don’t think I would read anything else by the same author unless his characterisations have drastically improved in the last 3 years, or the treatment in this book is a one-off (this may be the case given that all the quotes on the cover are for his novels in general, not this book in particular).