KJ Parker

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Read the hammer I wasn’t that impressed with the novel felt like it was just background information for a wider story also I was hoping for a better twist like the sister never existed apart from inside the mc mind.

I’m now on the second book of the Fencer trilogy and I like this story a lot more.

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Read the hammer I wasn’t that impressed with the novel felt like it was just background information for a wider story also I was hoping for a better twist like the sister never existed apart from inside the mc mind.

I’m now on the second book of the Fencer trilogy and I like this story a lot more.

Yeah, The Hammer is still one I scratch my head about. In some ways it feels like Parker-by-numbers, I don't feel like it really stretches out and gives anything big or new. But on the other hand, it's an interesting thing partly because it is so small and tightly bound.

Very interested to hear your thoughts on the Fencer trilogy, because I feel like that--possibly because it was the first thing he published under this pseudonym--is much more a blend of "traditional fantasy" and the Parker aesthetic. I mean, there's a magic system, for starters! But because of that, it doesn't have quite the clean lines of Parker's later work, but I feel like there are interesting things in the intricacies. (I also loved the lady characters, I feel like they're more interesting than he often delivers in later works.)

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Yes the ladies in the Fencer trilogy have got more personality than most of his other works. Take the lady doctor from Hammer she didn’t add anything to the story and I thought she could have had a much more interesting and bigger role to play as it was she was overshadowed by the male characters and her part was boring because of it.

It’s like he lost confidence in writing female characters till he wrote Telamon from Two of Swords

Now in his most recent book Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City which I love by the way the two ladies characters have fallen by the wayside and aren’t as fascinating/interesting to read about than Telamon because of lack of screen time we hardly get to know them.. One of them is a friend to the mc who runs a pub and is like a daughter to the mc but we hardly have any page time with her.

In the Fencer Trilogy we do have Page time  with the ladies and I think that helps.

I love the relationship between the siblings Venart and Vetriz

I love the  relationship between the work colleagues Athli and Loredan , I’m disappointed I’ve not seen her in book two yet. With no romance or maybe there could have been in life hadn’t got in the way.

Machaera an interesting mysterious lady I really hope to learn about her.

Even  Loradan Sister and Niece are fun to read about.

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Just finished The Belly of the Bow and I feel sick. I liked Bardas until this happened I can’t believe he done that to his innocent nephew I guess Iseutz got her revenge by tipping him off the Edge of his mind into insanity and now his insane as the rest of his family. Gruesome ending. I don’t know where the third books going to go

The only other character I can think of where I changed my mind  on them was probably Robin Hobb character Kennet

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ahhh, now I understand the other question a bit better!

Yeah. Yeah. In Parker's long and subtly nuanced career of writing about families and particularly brothers being awful to each other, I don't think there's ever been a pair quite as WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK??? as the Loredan brothers. And that's saying a lot.

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Finished The Fencer trilogy

Wow what destruction one Family can cause.

I’m glad Bardas finally got punished for what his done trapped on an island with Gorgas for the rest of his lifetime I could never forgive him for what he did to his nephew. Before that happened I wanted Bardas and Athili to get together but now I think she had a lucky escape. If only there had got together before the end of book two would there have been happy?  And less suffering to people elsewhere.

I thought the Ladies storylines fizzled out for the sons of heavens I expected a lot more from them  Vetriz even her brother outshine her in the third book. Still I was sorry to see their deaths as there were my favourite partnership to read about and what the hell happened to Machaera we only got a throw away line.

I’m not sure I ever understood how the magic worked in this world I found it a bit confusing I just let it flow over me.

Looks like everybody had a tragic ending apart from Gorgas who is now living happily with his brother in his mind.

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Thanks for updating with thoughts on conclusion, Eclipse, because I was really curious to know how you felt about this all, and how it held up altogether.

I think it has some weaknesses not so much as a result of the author's inexperience--because obviously Tom Holt has buckets of writing experience--but the novelty of this particular style/form/subgenre to him at this stage in his career. A lot of the themes from this trilogy get honed and polished and done differently/better (your mileage may vary) in other works, but I still think a lot about the Fencer trilogy in terms of how the elements were particularly put together here and how, for all its flaws, it was fascinating and visceral.

Thesis: all of KJ Parker's work has the underlying theme/moral/message: "You should just get over it and live your life." and therein lies the root of all his tragedies. It's certainly a Thing.

I’m not sure I ever understood how the magic worked in this world I found it a bit confusing I just let it flow over me.

I sort of love that about this trilogy, how NO ONE understands how it works, and the entire magic subplot is sort of about frantically trying to fix something when you don't know how it's broken or even necessarily if it IS broken and oh gosh who's flying this thing?? I also find it funny that this is basically the only time Parker bothers having a magic system, and no one understands how it works.

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Now reading The Company

Very slow paced and not much has happened yet after 50 % in. I’ve got a sneaky feeling it’s going to end in disaster and that one of the wife’s is a serial killer.

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I actually really like The Company, there are some fascinating concepts in there. I just cackle mysteriously at your predictions. (Though, I mean, "it's going to end in disaster" is like, "yes, did you not see the KJ Parker on the cover?")

I also continue to enjoy re-reading Parker vicariously through you, Eclipse!

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Finished The Company

I felt it took too long to get going but had an exciting last 20% of the book which never happened with The Hammer

We will eat everything Menin gives us even through we all know she can’t be trusted not to poison us . Big clue she didn’t even eat or pretend to eat the poisoned honey.

Thought Menin burnt the house down killing  Dorun but it was another Kunessin con job. Horrible man murdering people and then saying that what happens in war.

What was fly’s secret did he have one?

I feel that  Kunessin is like an abusive husband  to the rest of A company he has so much power over them and  there don’t realise it. There drop everything for him and follow him anywhere . He is poison.

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- One Little Room an Everywhere (2012)
http://www.nightshadebooks.com/2012/10/22/one-little-room-an-everywhere-k-j-parker/

Very good loved the Mc is he a villain or not. I just say he very weak morally. There’s a lot more magic in kJ Parker’s shorts then his novels.

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The Sun and I

https://subterraneanpress.com/magazine/summer_2013/the_sun_and_i_by_k_j_parker

Short story explaining How the invincible  Sun religion came into Parker’s world.

Spoiler for Hiden:

A giant con which came true haha

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I came hunting for this thread (warning: this topic has not been posted in for at least 120 days...) because I've just finished Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City and I'm sort of intellectually buzzing over what a solid piece of work it is. Given the facets which I'm still turning over in my fingers to see how they sparkle from different angles, this previous statement of mine:

Thesis: all of KJ Parker's work has the underlying theme/moral/message: "You should just get over it and live your life." and therein lies the root of all his tragedies. It's certainly a Thing.

...is particularly amusing to me. This is where I start talking spoilers, I suppose, so I will cut it away!

Spoiler for Hiden:

I've been thinking that, in a way, Sixteen Ways is the inverse story of the Engineer trilogy (an obvious comparison to make, given the occupation and mindset of the main character). What if the main character was fixated on this particular problem, but his focus was selfless rather than selfish? Or, perhaps, what if there was a guy who could get over it and live his life? In this case, possibly better framed as: "just because they were bad to us doesn't mean we have to be just as bad or worse."

I mean, this is still a classic Parker tragedy because it's caused by people being bloody people, and someone using personal injury as the spur to break out of regular thinking to conceive of something so horrible anyone else would blanch at it. But unlike a typical Parker tragedy, our main character is not that horrible-thinker, and gave this a different cast of tragedy, for my money.

Anyway, this was just about me wanting to blather a bit about this book and knowing scant people who have read it.

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I’ve read it , I really enjoyed it I hope he does more in the same vein as Sixteen ways to defend a city.

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I’ve read it , I really enjoyed it I hope he does more in the same vein as Sixteen ways to defend a city.

His next book - How To Rule An Empire And Get Away With It - coming out later this year (hopefully; publishing is as much as mess as any other industry right now) looks like it miiiight be related? But of course, with Parker, there's always a solid chance that the relationship is just "yeah, I got that scenario stuck in my mind so I'm just going to write versions of it until I get stuck on something else" (and they will probably all be fascinating, damn him).

But, I mean... the blurb:

The City may be under siege, but everyone still has to make a living. Take Notker, the acclaimed playwright, actor and impresario. Nobody works harder, even when he's not working. Thankfully, the good citizens of Classis appreciate an evening at the theatre even when there are large rocks falling out of the sky.

But Notker is a man of many talents, and all the world is, apparently, a stage. It seems that the Empire needs him - or someone who looks a lot like him - for a role that will call for the performance of a lifetime. At least it will guarantee fame, fortune and immortality. If it doesn't kill him first.

My first thought was that Notker here is one of the impersonators / impressionists that Orhan mentions in passing. And given the ending of Sixteen Ways, there is an obvious way these two link up. BUT... Classis? That was the supply depot that gets trashed in the first couple of chapters, not the City. So maybe I'm right, mor maybe Parker's theme here is actually "the ways in which history is just a giant game of telephone and the details get blurred and rearranged to suit a purpose; are these two related? aren't they? WHO CAN SAY? "