Man in the Box - Alice in Chains

The Fallen Blade
Assassini Trilogy, Book 1

Author: Jon Courtenay Grimwood
Pages: 464
ARC Acquired From: Orbit via NetGalley

Brief Summary:
A boy is confined in a box with no doors or windows, and he is held by silver chains. He cannot remember much of anything, not even his name. When rescued by Venetians, he discovers he is far away in distance and time from his barely remembered homeland, which he learns was destroyed a hundred years ago. What is he and why is he still alive?

Review:
I went into this book with no knowledge of the author and little of the plot. All I knew was that it was the first book of a historical fiction vampire series. My expectations were pretty low. In this context, I liked the book far more than I anticipated.

This story caught my interest early and managed to hold it. There is quite a bit of action and the characters are so odd that I wanted to figure out what was going on. Though I would not have had the story develop the way it did, it was definitely decent.

I had two main quibbles with the book:

1. There is only one non-attractive woman in the book, the one-armed old woman who raised Tycho, the boy in the box. All of the others are described by words like 'lush.' Unlikely.
2. Few chapters (of which there are many) pass without someone voiding their bowels out of fear and/or pain. This strikes me as unnecessarily gruesome, graphic and gross. Sure this is a natural thing and does happen to people, but every time violence happens? Really?

Some people will quite enjoy this book, which I thought was pretty decent for what it was. If you have no problems with violence or constant discussion of scatalogical happenings, give this a try. It also has a bunch of action scenes, political machinations and paranormal fantasy. I don't think I will be returning for book two, but this was not a bad read.

"I'm the man in the box
Buried in my shit
Won't you come and save me?
Save me"