Ivan's Reviews > The Liar's Key

Hello, my name is Nightflier and I'm an addict.

The sad truth is that I don't feel happy if I do not read. I am not productive, I can barely work and my hands start to shake. Fortunately or not, my job is to read - and after that to translate what I read. The trouble is that even when I become lost in translation for hours at a time, I still must greet the next day by reading a book. Over the past decade or so I've read thousands of novels, so I've become jaded and rare is the book that can tickle me and draw me in its world, making me loose my sleep or even work hours.

Yeah, well, The Liar's Key is one of those books, Gods damn you to Nine Hells, Mark Lawrence! Give me back my 4 nights without any sleep! (Just kidding. Give me the third book, like, right now! :) )

So, anyway, The Liar's Key marks significant improvement in both storytelling and writing skills of it's author. I might've mentioned this, but Lawrence reminds me of Jim Butcher in this way. His first novels were a bit shaky, but extremely interesting story-wise, although the world was depicted in broad strokes only, and characters were a bit simply built. As the story progressed, Lawrence became bolder, his writing more defined and his language more lyrical, defining his prose and differentiating it from the style of Joe Abercrombie or Richard Morgan.

At the beginning of his second trilogy those skills seem to have matured and Lawrence has grown into a writer with a sharply-defined style and his world grew with him. We see a lot more of the Broken Empire and in greater detail. His characters are more nuanced and although they seemingly have simple motivations, they are fully developed personalities with a lot of shades of light and dark in them. In fact, for his two main characters, quite literally.

The Liar's Key is not as big of a jump in quality when compared to the Prince of Fools as in comparison with the first trilogy. It's more like an evolution, which is another thing that tells us that Lawrence has matured as an author. The Key is less clunky in the parts which were clunky in the first novel, and more smooth in the parts that were smooth before, so I mark that as an improvement, but in a way it was an expected improvement. The last third of the book has some issues, though. To be honest, it's almost like the book ends at one point and then simply goes on. That last part seems to be artificially welded to the first part of the novel and although the ending manages to tie a lot of loose ends, it seems a bit forced and strained. But that very well may be a consequence of me reading way beyond my bed time and deciding to finish the book and read to 4 am instead of going to sleep at midnight.

So, as a passionate reader, I have very much enjoyed reading this one, and I would love to translate it someday. The Liar's Key is a novel that I sincerely recommend to you.