3.5
Colours in the Steel
ByPublisher Description
Perimadeia is the famed Triple City and the mercantile capital of the known world. Behind its allegedly impregnable walls, everything is available-including information that will allow its enemies to plan one of the most devastating sieges of all time.
The man called upon to defend Perimadeia is Bardas Loredan, a fencer-at-law, weary of his work and the world. For Loredan is one of the surviving members of Maxen's Pitchfork, the legendary band of soldiers who waged war on the Plains tribes, rendering an attack on Perimadeia impossible. Until now, that is.
But Loredan has problems of his own. In a city where court cases are settled by lawyers arguing with swords not words, enemies are all too easily made. And by winning one particular case, Loredan has unwittingly become the target of a young woman bent on revenge. The last thing he needs is the responsibility of saving a city.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesColours in the Steel Reviews
3.5
Lucy
Created 4 months agoShare
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“I first read Colours in the Steel by K. J. Parker when I was about 17 years old. I loved it. If you asked me what my favorite book was, I would almost always answer with this. Recently I was asked what my favorite book was and while I replied with Colours in the Steel, I realized it had been so long since I had read it that I could only vaguely remember the premise. I decided to grab it up and read it as a group reading challenge for the month of August.
I must say that time does blur the details. I remembered a fast-paced novel with epic characters and magic and swordplay. What I just read was vastly different. The novel is not fast-paced. There were more lulls in the storyline than there were sword fights despite the promises of the back cover. Bardas Loredan was not an epic hero. Even he would argue with the description of a hero at all. He was cowardly, and argumentative, and dour, and a drunk. I fell in love all over again, which also makes me ask the question on my own tastes.
The magic was mostly just science or philosophy that the layman couldn’t understand. There were times of premonitions that weren’t really explained or dwelled upon. But for the most part, it was a magic-less fantasy novel.
I’m giving it 4 stars because, despite the fact that the middle sagged in pace and content, the story still remains in my top novels. The characters are perfectly crafted with believable flaws and redeemable bravery. You can’t help but root for the underdog while still hoping that everything will turn out okay for everyone. Is it a perfect novel? No. But I do find it is still well worth the read even a decade later.”
Lucy
Created 4 months agoShare
Report
“I first read Colours in the Steel by K. J. Parker when I was about 17 years old. I loved it. If you asked me what my favorite book was, I would almost always answer with this. Recently I was asked what my favorite book was and while I replied with Colours in the Steel, I realized it had been so long since I had read it that I could only vaguely remember the premise. I decided to grab it up and read it as a group reading challenge for the month of August.
I must say that time does blur the details. I remembered a fast-paced novel with epic characters and magic and swordplay. What I just read was vastly different. The novel is not fast-paced. There were more lulls in the storyline than there were sword fights despite the promises of the back cover. Bardas Loredan was not an epic hero. Even he would argue with the description of a hero at all. He was cowardly, and argumentative, and dour, and a drunk. I fell in love all over again, which also makes me ask the question on my own tastes.
The magic was mostly just science or philosophy that the layman couldn’t understand. There were times of premonitions that weren’t really explained or dwelled upon. But for the most part, it was a magic-less fantasy novel.
I’m giving it 4 stars because, despite the fact that the middle sagged in pace and content, the story still remains in my top novels. The characters are perfectly crafted with believable flaws and redeemable bravery. You can’t help but root for the underdog while still hoping that everything will turn out okay for everyone. Is it a perfect novel? No. But I do find it is still well worth the read even a decade later.”
Lauren Swayne
Created 5 months agoShare
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Marshall Bockrath
Created about 1 year agoShare
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shewasonlyevie
Created about 1 year agoShare
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About K. J. Parker
is a pseudonym for Tom Holt. He was born in London in 1961. At Oxford he studied bar billiards, ancient Greek agriculture and the care and feeding of small, temperamental Japanese motorcycle engines; interests which led him, perhaps inevitably, to qualify as a solicitor and emigrate to Somerset, where he specialized in death and taxes for seven years before going straight in 1995. He lives in Chard, Somerset, with his wife and daughter.
Other books by K. J. Parker
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