It took me over 4 weeks to read the first hundred or so pages of this book, not because they were difficult to read, but because the book failed to engage or interest me in that time. I then, finally, just knocked out the last hundred or so pages late last night in a couple of hours.
My thoughts on the book are a lot different upon finishing it than what I was thinking during the first hundred pages or so, where I was bored by this evil little dwarf ‘s thoughts. He was at times funny in an over the top way, but the book felt more like an exercise than a work of literature. The downside was that I felt like George R.R. Martin, of all people, had created a more interesting character. The upshot was that I ruminated a little bit about what it even means to be evil.
What does “evil” mean in the real world? Or is this only a concept that exists in comic books and cartoons? Can we appropriate it into a real life concept in a more nuanced fashion? If we do, is it basically, practically speaking, a word we use to describe people who are not like we are and who are a threat to us in some material way?
This is an idiosyncratic response I suppose. There is nothing in this book intended to take you on this route. Instead, the dwarf is evil in a comic book way, but also in a realistic human way. If you took every negative human impulse and refused to balance it with any sense of human empathy or charity, then you would get the dwarf. There’s a quote on the cover that says “The evil in the dwarf’s nature is in ours, too-is universal.” And that is true. I think it does a good job of giving us that half of our own story.
The last hundred or so pages are far better than the first hundred or so though. Things start to actually happen. There is war and intrigue and murder. The dwarf is a lot funnier as well. Also, was no longer quite so convinced that Tyrion Lannister was a more complicated and engaging character. There are some scenes where the dwarf paints human beings as misanthropically as anything Swift did. Especially his revulsion at watching them indulge their appetites. The novel is justified on the back end, but it’s weakness remains the fact it seems to have been conceived as a writing exercise.
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