Karen’s Reviews > Half the World > Status Update

This is the character I love. He is the good man.

“Brand was the only one who stayed silent. He’d always thought doing good meant fighting alongside his brothers. But maybe doing good meant not fighting at all.”
— taken from the end of the chapter titled Cowardice

Brand is good man. It’s repeated throughout this book. Many times with great emphasis and often like it’s a bad thing to be. At this point, it has me worried. I like Brand.

Romance that rivals some of the best writers I’ve read.
Words carefully set in the right atmosphere for the most unlikely characters. From the chapter Sort of Alone, Brand thinking of Thorn as he heads away to battle:

“They were rare, her smiles, but that made them precious. Precious as gold, it seemed, and he was mightily pleased with himself for being the cause of it.”

Ministers playing at peace
Kings playing at war
The strong fight the battles
And the little people sing their songs

From the chapter titled Debts and Promises:
“…love’s even less fair than the battlefield”

So true.

Awesome lines like

“Nothing was the way the gods had made it, everything tortured by the hands of man.”

And battle scenes straight out of Red Sonja and Conan.
It’s a magical work of words!

First lovers’ spat, misunderstanding, and walk away from each other angry. And they aren’t even lovers yet.

I like this notion of “luck” in everything - weatherluck, weaponluck, etc. - and the “power of grudges”.

One might ask Father Yarvi where he gets “all those wonderful toys?”