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I really struggled with the first third of this book - it felt like nightmare after nightmare with no obvious reason. Horror and gore for kicks. But the back half really justifies the first: this is a story about remembering your humanity in the face of dark times, and a little about how power corrupts. If you squint, there’s maybe something here about how terrible things are sometimes needed to maintain peace and stability, but I’m going to choose to ignore this thread. The first half of this book was harrowing; I enjoyed the second half very much.

The setting is the Mediterranean at the end of the Middle Ages, if Carthage had won against Rome, if the Muslims had not conquered the Maghreb and Spain, if Jesus had been a woman, and if Europe had been threatened over the centuries by many elvish invasions. Oh, and magic happens.

The characters are well defined, but perhaps too close to DnD classes: the paladin, the sorcerer (no, the magician!), the cleric, the thief, the barbarian… So the whole adventure feels a bit like a ttrpg campaign.

On the other hand, Abercrombie is a master storyteller and I’m curious about what’s happening next for the company.

Un « petit » livre qui décentre radicalement (et donc remet à l'endroit) notre regard occidental « civilisé » sur le monde que notre civilisation mène à sa perte.

A climate thriller and anticipation novel, Always North is really well written, with enough poetry, vivid action and complex characters to embark the reader and take them wherever the story goes. And it never goes where it would be predictable -- only the climate catastrophe is.