11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Well written, but ultimatly disappointing, April 13, 2010
This review is from: The Folding Knife (Paperback)
Like Parker's other recent books (The Company, the Devices and Desires trilogy), The Folding Knife is well written, sports a compelling main character, and a brisk, entertaining plot...at least until the last 30 pages. Unfortunately, as The Folding Knife reaches its climax, its characters become inconsistent (contradicting themselves and making wildly out of character choices, for reasons that are never really justified, and seem motivated purely by the desire to move the plot along), the tightly wound narrative falls apart, and you're left with a story that's not only unsatisfying, but frustratingly hollow.
Parker has proven herself an author who can write a great beginning, and a compelling middle, but she still hasn't figured out how to pull off a satisfying, or even consistent, ending.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Not as dark and twisted as normal for Parker, but still gripping., February 7, 2011
This review is from: The Folding Knife (Paperback)
Bassianus Severus - known to the people as Basso - is the First Citizen of the Vesani Republic. He is politically savvy, financially creative, ruthlessly ambitious and very lucky. As his power and prestige grows, so does the rift between him and his sister, and the battle for the loyalty of her son.
The Folding Knife is the eleventh novel by the enigmatic K.J. Parker, a stand-alone book which is not part of any series. Fourteen years ago I picked up Parker's debut novel, Colours in the Steel, and later its two sequels and enjoyed them enormously. I've missed out on her books since then, which is something I'll have to rectify. The Folding Knife is outstanding.
This is the story of a man's life, or rather a twenty-year slice of it, but mostly focusing on the three years after he becomes First Citizen of the Republic. Basso grows up learning the family trade of banking, and through canny deals and excellent advice he soon becomes one of the richest men in the city. He then moves into politics, using his common touch with the people and his skills of persuasion and blackmail with the nobility to become the ruler of the Republic. He even has a long-term plan for the entire nation: to strengthen its borders and increase its resources against the threat of competing kingdoms jealous of Vesani's growing military and economic might.
Basso plays the Republic like an instrument, working out how to make the people and politicians jump to his tune. However, as the story unfolds Basso's inability to mend the feud with his sister or make foreign powers likewise obey the rules he sets out both become dangerous, leading to more desperate gambles. There's a strong economic spine to the book, with Parker successfully showing how expensive it is to run a large kingdom even without trying to fund major wars. In fact, I'm wondering if the economic storyline is a commentary on the current financial crisis, with Basso's self-justifications and ability to conjure money out of nowhere to keep things going just a bit longer being more than slightly reminiscent of recent news stories on the banks and national governments almost going bankrupt.
Basing the story on economics could be deathly dull, but Parker's well-paced writing, solid characterisation and dry sense of humour keeps things ticking along nicely. Basso is a well-written protagonist, monstrously flawed but also sympathetic, with his genius at handling money and politics contrasted against his disastrous relationships and his empty personal life. Basso's story is something of a tragedy then, but one with more than its fair share of humour and ingenuity. Also, by Parker's standards it's not that dark or disturbing (there's no Belly of the Bow 'moment' of unexpected ultraviolence here), though her twisted sense of humour remains intact. She also reigns in her tendency to interrupt the story for a three-page digression on the best way to build trebuchets (though there is one detailed explanation of how to use a scorpion - a piece of field artillery - as a stealthy assassination weapon, but this is quite funny so fair enough).
This is a strong novel with only a few brief but well-described moments of action, with the focus being on political and economic intrigue. Intriguingly, whilst set in an (unmapped) secondary world, there is no magic or mysticism in the novel at all, but this lack is barely felt.
As for criticisms, the tight focus on Basso means we don't get much of a sense of the Republic or the wider world beyond his own views on it, but that's the point of the story, I suppose. The ending is also perhaps a little underwhelming (and whilst it's not the first in a series, the ending is open enough to allow for a later sequel, if necessary). The reasons for Basso's sister's hatred of him are also under-explored, since we don't have any POV chapters from her. Finally, there are moments when things go as clockwork and Basso finds things going all his way that feels a little too clinical and not allowing for the unpredictability of human actions, but the latter part of the novel repays that in spades, so that's not too much of a problem.
The Folding Knife (****½) is an engrossing, page-turning economic and political thriller, executed with finesse by one of our best (but possibly most underrated) fantasists. The novel is available now in the UK and USA.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Vintage Parker - a trilogy in a book, July 5, 2010
This review is from: The Folding Knife (Paperback)
For the record, I'm pretty sure my glowing opinion of KJ Parker is well-documented in other reviews. The Folding Knife isn't new territory for this talented & enigmatic author: an ambitious, Machiavellian man has plans for the world, but must overcome human weakness to achieve them. The setting is a "generic" medieval/fantasy world, populated with vague analogues of Roman and Byzantine cultures.
As a single volume, The Folding Knife just doesn't have all the room it needs - there's an epic story in here, but it is told very quickly. Brilliant, but feels like the Reader's Digest version of the (even more brilliant) Engineer Trilogy. I greedily wish, like with The Company, Parker would've explored slightly newer ground.
Still highly recommended: my main (and only) criticism is that I like Parker's other work even more.
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