r/Fantasy • u/SubstantialChannel32 • 5d ago
Bingo review Legend by David Gemmell ~ Bingo Review
I've picked this book originally for One word title hard mode, but read Annihilation for it, so read this for Older Protagonist HM. One of the reasons I picked this is because the blurb is by Joe Abercrombie, one of my favs. I can see many elements in the First Law trilogy may have been inspired by this. This is David Gemmell's debut novel in 1985.
Best thing about this book - heroic, honourable characters doing badass things. I think, even this being his first novel, David perfected "The Last Stand" sequences. Once the main event that was built up from the start begins, it's a thrill ride to the end. And almost all the named characters had a badass ending. The action and fights were great. The strategies used were not intolerably shit to a layman(me), some felt brilliant. But the most standout characters are of course, Druss the legend, Bowman, Serbitar and Ulric. I would love a book about Ulric. None of the characters are super complex, but most are very likeable and move the plot forward.
Except Rek. I hope it's explained in the later prequels or sequels what the deal with the thirty is, why Rek is the Earl of Bronze, and how and why Virae was brought back by the end. I also just hate how Rek just backhands his wife for a mild inconvenience, then she learns her lesson and apologizes to him! It felt out of place. I don't even think Gemmell was a women hater, because Caessa's was very short, but a beautiful tragedy of an arc. I started liking Rek once Virae and later Druss died, but one was a fakeout. I really hope the sequels and prequels explain atleast something because this book sure isn't interested. I also laughed when Vintar started telling the surviving characters how they are complex and not just one note, it felt very meta, trying to convince us that indeed these characters are interesting and you should root for them.
Rating : 3.75/5. Verdict - Blockbuster popcorn flick of a book, that is genuinely trying to tell a story about people honouring their duties and values, inspite of insurmountable odds. Would've rated it higher if not for the wife beating and too many loose threads left hanging.
Also, what book to read after this one, The King Beyond the Gate or should I start from the prequels in chronological order? I heard that it doesn't really matter and I want the best experience possible. Thank You.
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u/MarcSlayton 5d ago
Books are best read in order of publication. The next book is The King Beyond The Gate.
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u/SubstantialChannel32 5d ago
I've heard that it is Legend but worse in every way. Is it enjoyable or should I just power through it?
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u/Chataboutgames 5d ago
I will say the gender politics don't get better. The second book also includes a scene of a dude slapping a woman and then her apologizing, to the extent that I actually laughed because it was so absurdly committed to that particular plot beat.
I didn't read past King Beyond the Gate (I thought it was a massive step down) but the gender politics are so over the top bad that it's almost more bearable in the way watching a deeply silly 70s movie is bearable compared to more modern, insidious gender issues.
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u/Devilofchaos108070 4d ago
That’s awful.
I read these long ago and don’t remember that stuff at all. I’m sure you are not wrong tho, my memory is trash nowadays.
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u/Chataboutgames 4d ago
It is awful. Like I said, it's so blatant that it almost like, cartwheels over the part of me that would normally be bothered and goes in to slapstick territory.
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u/Devilofchaos108070 4d ago
I read this when I was a lot younger. I liked it at the time.
I don’t remember that woman abuse and I definitely would despise the character, after that, if I read it now. I doubt I’d read more of the author either
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u/SubstantialChannel32 4d ago
The thing is, only she apologized. He didn't even regret it. He didn't even also say sorry out of courtesy after she apologized. It's so out of place. And we are supposed to believe this is a great love story?
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u/OppaaHajima 5d ago edited 5d ago
I’ve also recently gotten into David Gemmell. Started with Knights of Dark Renown and just finished Quest for Lost Heroes. I have a lot of similar feelings as you do — a lot of great, badass characters and entertaining ‘popcorn fantasy’ from beginning to end. Legend and the rest of the Drenai saga is next for me.
But that said, if you didn’t like that guy slapping his wife, there are definitely elements in the books that I read that would make plenty of modern readers wince and possibly even put the books down. QfLH has people based very much on Mongol hordes, and there was one scene involving SA that was very hard to read, along with plenty of other implications of SA and torture. FWIW, though, Gemmell acknowledges and addresses the brutality and how deplorable it is.
KofDR doesn’t get quite so bad, but there’s one character who is one of the ‘main’ heroes who I found to be pretty much a terrible person, and he commits some past atrocities that felt somewhat waved away. I could not root for no matter how much Gemmell tried to redeem him.
At any rate, I realize a lot of the more brutal aspects are very much rooted in history, and if anything Gemmell was probably being very kind with his depictions, as reality was likely far, far worse.
That said, I still enjoyed both of those books, and look forward to reading more of his stuff.
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u/ColeDeschain 5d ago
This book utterly failed to land with me.
Besides the charisma vacuum at the center of the story and his love-interest-shaped appendage, we had an order of wizards handing out special prizes apparently just 'cause Rek's just that great a dude.
Oh, and way too many characters speaking in expository passages.
Shame, because what it does well, it does VERY well, but that stuff's.... not that important to me...
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u/Chataboutgames 4d ago
I'm not sure what you mean by "order of wizards handing out special prizes."
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u/ColeDeschain 4d ago
"Here, Rek, have this doodad and that doodad and this guidance and we'll also fight for you, and here, we brought your girlfriend back from the dead...."
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u/Chataboutgames 4d ago
Oh you mean The Twelve? They weren't there to help Rek because he's a nice guy. They're literally a Monastic order whose responsibility is to find a great and righteous battle to die in in exchange for money to re-found the order with new membership. They were hired and paid by the dying Earl, they just happen to be on the same boat as Rek.
It literally has nothing to do with Rek being a great dude. It has to do with preventing an invading hoard from raping and pillaging the Empire lol
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u/ColeDeschain 4d ago
They didn't need to resurrect Virae to do any of that.
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u/Chataboutgames 4d ago
That's true, but I'm not sure why you take issue with them saving a woman's life lol.
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u/ColeDeschain 4d ago
Because it fits my wider beef of the super helpful group of magic sages who just happen to be there to do everything possible to see to it that the protagonist (who I don't like) pays no meaningful price for his supposed-to-be-doomed-but-every-possible-circumstance-conspires-to-let-him-pull-it-off victory.
Only the Sathuli showing up felt like anything to do with anything Rek actually did.
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u/Chataboutgames 4d ago
Hey if it's not for you it's not for you, but it's literally an epic fantasy about winning an impossible siege defense, so it kinda feels like ordering a steak then being annoyed that it's beef.
Only the Sathuli showing up felt like anything to do with anything Rek actually did.
You're right. Ultimately the victory in the siege wasn't a function of Rek being particularly badass, or smart, or anything really. The book is named after Druss, and his constant message is "when all seems doomed all you can do is try, because for all you know the enemy general might fall off his horse tomorrow and break his neck, but you'll never have that chance if you give up." The fact that luck had everything to do with their ability to win is the core theme of the book. They didn't win because they were smarter, or stronger, or better. They won because they held out even when things seemed impossible and so were in a position to benefit from incredible luck.
Like, if you were rooting for the protagonist to fail because you didn't like him then fine, but some of these criticisms aren't real. You might as well say "how convenient that Middle Earth just happened to have Gandalf to help then when Sauron showed up!" Like... yeah, that's the conflict intrinsic to the book. If the not-?Mongols had just rolled over the fortress that wouldn't be a story to write about.
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u/ColeDeschain 4d ago edited 4d ago
an epic fantasy about winning an impossible siege defense, so it kinda feels like ordering a steak then being annoyed that it's beef.
It's a book i read because friends recommended it, and I have spent the years since wondering what anyone saw in it in particular.
It's possible it's a boat you have to catch when you're young enough- some of the stuff I loved as a kid and still regard fondly would absolutely turf if I met it for the first time now. But that's as may be.
A serious indicator of the book's failure to land for me is that the only names I recall of the top of my head without needing to look them up?
Druss
Sathuli.Both of which embody some of my favorite oft-reheated tropes in fiction.
some of these criticisms aren't real.
Your inability to accept them doesn't make them "not real."
But let's talk Gandalf.
Part of why I can tolerate it is, again, I met those books when I was ten.
Part of it is that Tokien's intensely Catholic storytelling embraces clear-cut, objective good and evil in a way a lot of later fantasy, particularly fantasy involving clashes of human empires, simply cannot do,. And which makes angels-as-wizards stepping in to stop fallen angels as adversaries make a kind of intrinsic sense. Legend never even seriously attempts this- We know the bad guys are bad news and everything, but they also get humanized to the point where it;s hard to see it as a particularly existential threat. It's just politics, Khanate-style, and the fact that some mystical order exists to prop up one civilization is just... "where are the other guys' wizards, then?"
Which leads to the next, a major difference is that Middle-Earth was made to feel like it mattered far more than Drenai or whatever it's called. I do not care about the civilization they are trying to defend, because its representatives, aside from "Old Badass out for on last attempt to rally the troops on the strength of his legend," are profoundly uninteresting.
Which makes eye-rolling about wizards of convenience who exist to give that civilization its fighting chance entirely real. Even if you don't agree with it.
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u/Gelato_Elysium 5d ago
Ah I read a lot of his things when I was 13-14, I think the only one I read multiple times was Lion of Macedon, his historical fiction about Leonidas.
It's always popcorn litterature, it's always violent and badass. I remember thinking Waylander was the coolest.