Yet More Grim Lovin'

Two more reviews have arrived for The Grim Company. What's the verdict, you may ask?

The well-paced narrative is enhanced rather than stalled by occasional flash-backs and the wealth of description. This is a thoroughly enjoyable book for all those who like their fantasy to be gritty, realistic and a little on the dark side.

So sayeth Rachel Sanderson in her review for We Love This Book.


The vastly influential and exceptionally nice Mihir Wanchoo at Fantasy Book Critic opined the following:

I read it on a weekend while stuck at Minneapolis airport and those 7-8 hours were spent reading this book cover to cover. I was thoroughly entranced by it and I think Luke is going to be another British phenomenon like a certain editor-turned fantasy writer nearly seven years ago.

The Grim Company is truly an EPIC fantasy debut that shows all the characteristic strengths of the genre whilst managing to avoid almost all its pitfalls. This is one debut not to be missed and marks Luke Scull as one of epic fantasy’s talented debutants.

No idea who that editor-turned fantasy writer could be. No idea at all.

Mihir awarded the novel 4 out of 5 stars on Goodreads, though to me the review read more like a 5. But it would take a truly churlish and small man indeed to quibble over such a thing...

In the interests of full disclosure (and not at all in making a snarky point), I should note that Mihir's colleague Liviu did not like the novel so well, saying it reminded him strongly of Glen Cook. I must therefore surmise that I am somehow able to be two very different writers at the same time, as I've elsewhere been called an Abercrombie fan-fictionist.

All I need in my next book is some braid-tugging, a few "nuncles", and copious amounts of black seed spraying everywhere and I will have proven my credentials as an impersonator extraordinaire. Why, I'm the Keyser Soze of fantasy authors!