THE COLD COMMANDS: A Land Fit for Heroes, Book 2 by Richard Morgan

Narrated by Simon Vance

Sublimation to Plot Development

The story is now hitting its stride. The three main characters from book one are back. Ringil is on a vendetta that he has made personal to take vengeance for his cousin who was taken in slavery in the first book, and Egar the Dragonbane is fending off internal power struggles. It has the feel of a middle novel in that the story is allowed to stretch out its legs. It seems that in this second installment of The Land Fit for Heroes trilogy that the exigencies of plot preclude explicit diversions. They are, at least fewer in number and shorter in length than such scenes were in book one. It is my guess that one of two circumstances conspired to bring this situation about: Either Morgan had finished making his point concerning diversity or the buzz caused by the first book was becoming negative to an uncomfortable degree and concern for the bottom line persuaded both author and publisher to tone down the in-your-face nature of the first volume. We may never know. I, for one, am glad that Morgan seems to have spent more of his efforts on developing the story. It is a better book than the first.

Jack Vance is a fine reader for this book. I appreciate the way his British accent makes the dark underbelly of this story a little easier to hear. As I mentioned in my review for the first book, sometimes, particularly when portraying female voices, I think he is channeling the characters of Monty Python in the Medieval worlds of The Holy Grail or Jabberwocky. He brings some much needed, if unintentional, comic relief to the brutal grimy mercenary world in which the story takes place.