Pieces of Hate, by Tim Lebbon
Book Review by Jeff Edwards
Have you read this book?
Temple and Gabriel return in Book 2 of the Assassin Series, and in this round, Gabriel chases his nemesis from Portsmouth to Port Royal, hoping to stop the hired killer before he spills even more blood into an already crimson sea.
Pieces of Hate is a rip-roaring yarn of pirates in the Caribbean: a kind of prequel to "Dead Man's Hand" and its gunfighters in the Old West. But shifting timelines are perfectly acceptable in an alternate-history series, and doubly so in self-contained novellas. Readers who are just meeting Temple and Gabriel will jump into the action with no problem; those who have tackled Book 1 will appreciate the new revelations about Gabriel's background, including what drives him to pursue Temple so relentlessly ("I'm charged to kill him. It's my mission in what's left of existence").
Tim Lebbon has obviously done his research, but he doesn't bog down his prose with mind-numbing esoterica in order to prove that he's been hitting the history books. Instead, he seamlessly weaves authentic details into the narrative to evoke a sense of the past ("Gabriel...drew his pistols and went about loading them - priming, powder, wadding, shot"; "One of the deck guns loosed a volley, skidding back and gouging the oaken boards as ropes slipped their moorings"). Then, Lebbon propels the story forward with a cinematic style: One can easily imagine this adventure as a movie, or at least a richly illustrated graphic novel.
At the conclusion of Pieces of Hate, Gabriel hopes that he can rest before confronting Temple again. But for Tim Lebbon fans eagerly anticipating Book 3 of the Assassin Series, the next battle can't come soon enough.
Pieces of Hate is a rip-roaring yarn of pirates in the Caribbean: a kind of prequel to "Dead Man's Hand" and its gunfighters in the Old West. But shifting timelines are perfectly acceptable in an alternate-history series, and doubly so in self-contained novellas. Readers who are just meeting Temple and Gabriel will jump into the action with no problem; those who have tackled Book 1 will appreciate the new revelations about Gabriel's background, including what drives him to pursue Temple so relentlessly ("I'm charged to kill him. It's my mission in what's left of existence").
Tim Lebbon has obviously done his research, but he doesn't bog down his prose with mind-numbing esoterica in order to prove that he's been hitting the history books. Instead, he seamlessly weaves authentic details into the narrative to evoke a sense of the past ("Gabriel...drew his pistols and went about loading them - priming, powder, wadding, shot"; "One of the deck guns loosed a volley, skidding back and gouging the oaken boards as ropes slipped their moorings"). Then, Lebbon propels the story forward with a cinematic style: One can easily imagine this adventure as a movie, or at least a richly illustrated graphic novel.
At the conclusion of Pieces of Hate, Gabriel hopes that he can rest before confronting Temple again. But for Tim Lebbon fans eagerly anticipating Book 3 of the Assassin Series, the next battle can't come soon enough.
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