Prince of Fools (Red Queen's War, book 1) by Mark Lawrence

Having read (and loved) Lawrence's debut trilogy, you could be forgiven for thinking you knew what to expect with his latest effort. I see them as very different beasts, as the protagonists are almost polar opposites, so too are the tone of the stories.
Jorg was all action, bloodthirsty to a degree, but cold and calculating with a deliberate endgame. Jalan, the titluar fool, is none of these things. At all. An accidental hero from a war we only hear about second hand, a self confessed coward, with more than an ounce of pride accompanying that, he is thrust into an epic quest by being magically tied to the viking Snorri.
Told in first person by Jalan, he doesn't hide, from us, his eagerness to escape this entirely inconvenient predicament. Jalan would much prefer to be hopping in and out of pretty ladies beds, than in and out of near death scrapes with the Undead and assassins.
Jorg and Jalan are both anti-heroes, but there their similarities end. Lawrence has a rare gift of making his readers root for unlikely characters, but he has done this successfully again here. Despite Jalans protestations to the contrary he develops a genuine affection for his big norse companion and puts himself in harms way to aid him. While not completely redeemed of his cowardly ways by the end, Jalan certainly goes through a change and is all the stronger for being aware of this.
Lawrence writes absorbing tales, with a roundedness to his characters that enhance the telling of these tales.