The Hammer
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- £3.99
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- £3.99
Publisher Description
'The Hammer is a novel by an author working at the very top of her game. It is a thing of terrible beauty.' - Interzone
'Parker's acerbic wit and knowledge of human nature are a delight to read' - RT Book Reviews
The colony was founded seventy years ago. The plan was originally to mine silver, but there turned out not to be any.
Now an uneasy peace exists on the island, between the colonists and the once-noble met'Oc, a family in exile on a remote stronghold for their role in a vaguely remembered civil war. The met'Oc are tolerated, in spite of occasional cattle stealing raids, since they alone possess the weapons considered necessary protection in the event of the island's savages becoming hostile.
Intelligent, resourceful, and determined, Gignomai is the youngest brother in the current generation of met'Oc. He is about to realise exactly what is expected of him; and what it means to defy his family.
Books by K.J. Parker:
Fencer Trilogy
The Colours in the Steel
The Belly of the Bow
The Proof House
Scavenger Trilogy
Shadow
Pattern
Memory
Engineer Trilogy
Devices and Desires
Evil for Evil
The Escapement
Saloninus
Blue and Gold
The Devil You Know
Two of Swords
The Two of Swords: Part 1
The Two of Swords: Part 2
The Two of Swords: Part 3
Novels
The Company
The Folding Knife
The Hammer
Sharps
Savages
Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City
My Beautiful Life
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Which matters more, intent or outcome? Parker (The Folding Knife) explores this dilemma in an understated tale of vengeance, along with the social paradox of keeping the peace when justice demands stirring up old crimes. In the backwater colony of an empire whose culture is borrowed from the Italian Renaissance, we encounter Gignomai met'Oc, youngest son of an exiled noble family. Gignomai decides to repudiate his inheritance and escape to the wilderness to start a factory that will break a trade monopoly that impoverishes the colonists. In the process, he triggers a series of events that will lead to an accounting for his family's secret and independence for the colony. Parker offsets the inevitability of the plot, foreordained as a Greek tragedy, by a continual inversion of types, like peasant mobs who need to be shamed into storming the castle and savages who speak more elegantly than Gignomai's father. While the revenge plot and mocking tone would do credit to a Jacobean drama, Parker maintains a cool and detached atmosphere, giving the work the feel of a stately court dance and not a blood-racing tarantella.
