Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I don't mind harsh, grim heroes...but even the most stone-cold fantasy heroes I have read in the past have at least a shred of humanity. I did not complete this book, and maybe that is my fault. The cover flaps read good -- sounded like my kind of story -- but twenty pages in I realized that this was not my kind of read -- where a 13 year old boy -- and he is 13 in the start of the book -- rapes two teenage girls after killing their father -- and in a spark of cruelty tells the father he is going to do so before he dies, and then once the rapes are complete, murders them both by burning their house around them while they are still alive, and he has zero regrets other than to comment that the older one was more compliant than the younger one before he had both of them killed. Not a shred of remorse. No sign of humanity. At the start of this book, the main charactor is an amoral psychopath who revels in death, and who has zero compulsion in taking a life with no regrets. I learned my lesson -- maybe I should have taken the time to read the first chapter in the store before buying -- if I had, I would not have purchased this book. I won't be buying any of the follow-on books. Either the "anti-hero" is no hero at all, which I suspect is the case, or the author is going to at some point going to have a plot twist that blames society for the lack of humanity in the main character, which I think stupid, because heroes -- even those with questionable methods and means -- rise above such silliness and at the end of the day, do the right thing. The way this book reads...I don't think that this hero has a concept of right or wrong, and will be unable to do the right thing as the character evolves. If you are looking for a fantasy hero version of Riddick (as from Riddick's Chronicles) or even a tale in the same vein as the anti-hero Elric of Melnibone, this is definitely not it. If you are looking to read about a psychopathic killer whose humanity left him at an early age (if it was ever there at all), and enjoy cruelty and meaningless death, then this book might be for you. Once again...maybe I am not doing the book justice since I did not read all the way through the end..but I did skim over the rest of the book randomly...and it seemed like Jorg did not change his stripes as the story progressed. Basically, this book is likely to remain unread, and will be on the shelf soon of a Half Price Books soon.