Author: George R. R Martin
Themes: Chivalry, living up to your values
Quote:
Each time a battle is lost or a crop fails, the fools will say, 'Baelor would not have let it happen, but the hedge knight killed him.'”
Dunk could see the truth in that. “If I had not fought, you would have had my hand off. And my foot. Sometimes I sit under that tree there and look at my feet and ask if I couldn't have spared one. How could my foot be worth a prince's life? And the other two as well, the Humfreys, they were good men too." Ser Humfrey Hardyng had succumbed to his wounds only last night.
“And what answer does your tree give you?”
“None that I can hear. But the old man, Ser Arlan, every day at evenfall he'd say, 'I wonder what the morrow will bring.' He never knew, no more than we do. Well, mighten it be that some morrow will come when I'll have need of that foot? When the realm will need that foot, even more than a prince's life?"
Reading/Listening Time: 10 hours and 50 minutes for the trilogy
Review:
A few years ago I attempted to read the first book in the "A Song of Ice and Fire" series, I found the language to be a bit crude for my tastes ("If I have to read the word "tit" used inappropriately ONE. MORE. TIME!!!!")
Even though I didn't finish the book, I was really interested in the world it takes place in and a lot of the ideas Mr Martin seems to be trying to convey. When I found out that the author wrote another series that takes place in the same fantasy world (and that they were short stories) I knew I definitely wanted to try them out.
I felt like I got a lot more out of this series than I probably would from ASOIAF because it's mostly focused on one character, and he basically typifies the themes in ASOIAF that I found particularly compelling.
It's about this guy named Duncan who's a knight, but because he's not sworn to a Lord he kinda just works freelance. Because he doesn't really have a boss you'd think this means he doesn't really get held accountable for the kind of behavior he exhibits on the job, but actually he's basically internalized the standards of knightly conduct. It isn't until he starts hanging out with normal knights (ones who are sworn to a lord) that he realizes that other people don't take all that morality stuff very seriously. In each story, his internal sense of what's right and what's wrong is challenged in some way. Like he'll take a job, thinking that it's somewhat straightforward, but the situation ends up being way more complex than he initially thought.
This is actually a really cool conflict! And the really neat thing about it is that he really tests himself in this; he doesn't relinquish his mores the moment they become inconvenient to him, he actually thinks about it before he does something. And often times he finds the correct route is, in fact, the most difficult one: the one that requires self-sacrifice, courage, or selflessness...all the things he's been raised up to believe are important ACTUALLY ARE IMPORTANT.
Another interesting aspect of this story is the Targaryens. These stories take place about 100 years before Mr Martin's SOIAF novels so there are still a lot of them around and, to me, they are a lot of fun to be around. And the way he gets kind of informally taken in by them (or rather, he takes them in) is quite interesting!
Rating: 4/5 stars on the first two, 3/5 stars on the last because they were setting it up as some sort of a turning point for Egg's character and I didn't feel like it really was.
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