The Steel Remains
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Description
Book Information
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I was looking forward to reading this book for a while and I really wanted to like it. I had found this title on a list of fantasy books with LGBT main characters. Two of the lead characters (Ringil and Archeth) are indeed gay and lesbian respectively. However in the world of “The Steel Remains” this is a crime punishable by death. It is a constant topic how everyone thinks him a “degenerate” and how miserable being gay has made his life for him (his first love being tortured and executed for it while he had to watch and being raped by classmates are just two examples out of many). All of the other characters treat Ringil at worst terribly and at best only a bit derogatory for his orientation. Even his friends refer to him with derogatory terms or slurs. As for the sex scenes I don’t think I ever read a gay sex scene that was so painfully obviously written by a straight man who thinks gay sex is kinda gross. All of this made me incredibly uncomfortable while reading and also left me with the strong feeling that the author had only made his main character gay to shock conservative fantasy readers but himself sees it as shameful and bad. The plot of the book itself is mediocre and takes forever to really take off. The first ¾ of the book drag on for what feels like forever and the plot only takes off during the last 100 pages. In terms of worldbuilding there are a few interesting ideas but in general the world of “The Steel Remains” is steeped in corruption, violence, rape, homophobia, slavery and brutality. With this the author probably wants to subvert tropes of the fantasy genre like a lot of other fantasy authors have been doing in the past years. If done well this can make for fascinating fantasy worlds, however in this case it felt like the author just heaped more and more bad stuff on top of each other for shock value. In one instance Morgan describes breasts as “jellied weights” and having “rope-end nipples”. His writing style in the rest of the book isn't better, so it's needless to say I wasn't convinced by it. Not only did this book not give me a single incentive to read the rest of the trilogy it also made me never want to touch a single book by Richard Morgan ever again. If you’re looking to read books with LGBT characters, I can only advise you to look elsewhere because Morgans treatment of those characters is terrible and the world he imagined full of homophobia and rape
This one is tough to rate. The whole story is based around three completely different characters, which shared a war and some other adventures, combined with questionable reputation and lots of sexual interspecies intercourse. I am by no means shy of sexual acts in fantasy books, but I usually think it is odd, when this is basically the whole plot and everything else feels like a filler. Also this whole other species invasion is so puzzling, they finally decided to re-appear, because they used to be there some millennia ago? And their best option is to invade clandestine, by abiding the rules of mankind? I still like the narrative style of the author, with lots of recaps and flashbacks, but I am not sure, if I want to keep on reading this series, although I've already bought the second book.
Description
Book Information
Posts
I was looking forward to reading this book for a while and I really wanted to like it. I had found this title on a list of fantasy books with LGBT main characters. Two of the lead characters (Ringil and Archeth) are indeed gay and lesbian respectively. However in the world of “The Steel Remains” this is a crime punishable by death. It is a constant topic how everyone thinks him a “degenerate” and how miserable being gay has made his life for him (his first love being tortured and executed for it while he had to watch and being raped by classmates are just two examples out of many). All of the other characters treat Ringil at worst terribly and at best only a bit derogatory for his orientation. Even his friends refer to him with derogatory terms or slurs. As for the sex scenes I don’t think I ever read a gay sex scene that was so painfully obviously written by a straight man who thinks gay sex is kinda gross. All of this made me incredibly uncomfortable while reading and also left me with the strong feeling that the author had only made his main character gay to shock conservative fantasy readers but himself sees it as shameful and bad. The plot of the book itself is mediocre and takes forever to really take off. The first ¾ of the book drag on for what feels like forever and the plot only takes off during the last 100 pages. In terms of worldbuilding there are a few interesting ideas but in general the world of “The Steel Remains” is steeped in corruption, violence, rape, homophobia, slavery and brutality. With this the author probably wants to subvert tropes of the fantasy genre like a lot of other fantasy authors have been doing in the past years. If done well this can make for fascinating fantasy worlds, however in this case it felt like the author just heaped more and more bad stuff on top of each other for shock value. In one instance Morgan describes breasts as “jellied weights” and having “rope-end nipples”. His writing style in the rest of the book isn't better, so it's needless to say I wasn't convinced by it. Not only did this book not give me a single incentive to read the rest of the trilogy it also made me never want to touch a single book by Richard Morgan ever again. If you’re looking to read books with LGBT characters, I can only advise you to look elsewhere because Morgans treatment of those characters is terrible and the world he imagined full of homophobia and rape
This one is tough to rate. The whole story is based around three completely different characters, which shared a war and some other adventures, combined with questionable reputation and lots of sexual interspecies intercourse. I am by no means shy of sexual acts in fantasy books, but I usually think it is odd, when this is basically the whole plot and everything else feels like a filler. Also this whole other species invasion is so puzzling, they finally decided to re-appear, because they used to be there some millennia ago? And their best option is to invade clandestine, by abiding the rules of mankind? I still like the narrative style of the author, with lots of recaps and flashbacks, but I am not sure, if I want to keep on reading this series, although I've already bought the second book.