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And so we come to Best Served Cold, which is the last of these rereads I’ll be doing for the time being. The Heroes was pretty recent and I feel it’s still pretty firmly in mind, and the nominal aim of this exercise was to familiarise myself with past characters and events while finishing work on Red Country rather than only to heap glory upon myself. That said, Best Served Cold is fucking excellent, which is nice.
Huge Spoilers! Those who haven’t read Best Served Cold look away NOW! And indeed buy and read it NOW! Or at any rate buy it. Reading is optional.
Some background may be helpful. This was my fourth book, but in many ways my difficult second project, as Before They are Hanged and Last Argument of Kings obviously continued with the same characters and plotlines as The Blade Itself. Plus it was the first book I started work on with books out there in the marketplace and therefore with (at least a little bit) of expectation from readers and critics. I’d written Last Argument of Kings in fourteen months, with relatively little blood, sweat and tears, and I expected this to be that little bit more straightforward again as I devoted more time to my writing, my craft improved and so forth. How wrong I was. Probably this was my most difficult book to write, I was crippled with doubts and worries about it pretty much from the start. It’s hard to put myself in that mindset now, but I think I considered giving up on it a couple of times. Certainly the challenge of coming up with new characters, new voices, new locations, a new style of storytelling approach, on a schedule and with people waiting, was vastly much more difficult and pressurised than I’d expected. In the end it took about 20 months to write, I think, and for a great deal of that time I was deeply worried that it would turn out … let’s say a little bit shit, and indeed that I’d never write anything as good as The First Law again. ’Well, not every book can be your best…’ said with a mournful shrug of the shoulders was a frequent refrain of that time, as I recall.
Partly I think that was entirely inevitable having, against any expectations, finished “that project I’d always dreamed of writing since a young lad”, and having used up a lot of the ideas I’d come up with during, well, my life (alright, stolen from other writers) in writing The First Law. Partly it was difficulties with making the central character, Monza, work. Even back then (I was starting to plan this book probably around the time Before They are Hanged came out) I was a little dissatisfied with what I’d done with the women in The First Law, and I wanted to try my hand at a woman in the lead role. One would desire that the writing of a female character should be identical to a male one (not necessarily that the characters should feel identical whether male or female, but that the writing process should be the same with the same aim of producing the most vivid, interesting, authentic, multi-dimensional character possible), but I think there are actually a whole range of factors that make writing women more difficult than writing men if you’re a man. There are elements of the female experience you’re always going to be slightly guessing at. Just as one example, you’re probably going to have a lot of direct experience of how groups of men behave, you’ll hopefully have at least some experience of how men and women behave around each other, but by definition you probably won’t know much directly about how groups of women behave. The likelihood is extremely high that you won’t personally have had to deal with sexism in the same way. Stuff like that. And then you’ve probably read, watched, absorbed a shit-load of male-centric media of one kind or another as well, and not a lot of female-centric. You can research, you can ask questions, but watching How to Make an American Quilt just ain’t much substitute for, you know, being a woman. Plus you’re probably aware that your women characters are going to be exposed to a kind of scrutiny your male ones probably won’t be. If you’re writing tight point of view that slight distance, that slight doubt, perhaps a tendency to over-think and over-worry, can amount to some significant trouble in making a female character effortlessly pop in perhaps the way your male ones do. I’m by no means saying that it’s not possible for men to write good women, but for me, at least, I think it adds a level of difficulty – it’s definitely been something I’ve had – and continue to have – to work at. Anyway, Monza was difficult, and there were a lot of exacerbating factors: she was a central character in a way that I hadn’t had before, Glokta, Logen and Jezal had pretty much equal screen time in The First Law but here Monza’s PoV accounted for not much less than half the whole book, so the stakes were high. She was entirely the driving force of the book as well – Glokta, Logen and Jezal had minimal agency, they tended to very much react to events being directed from elsewhere, whereas Monza’s quest for vengeance was the engine from which all the events in Best Served Cold had to flow. And she was fundamentally not particularly likeable, especially to begin with, she’s cold, tough, calculating, ruthless, ultra single-minded. It wasn’t until I got to the end of my first draft that I really felt she resolved in my own mind, and I got a handle on how to make her work, mostly through a lot of cutting and streamlining. I think she does work, but doesn’t necessarily offer that immediately likeable, relatable, vivid central thread that Logen, and maybe even Glokta, give you in The First Law.
Best Served Cold certainly got good reviews at the time, not least from GRRM who described it as “a kind of splatterpunk sword n’ sorcery Count of Monte Cristo,” tee hee, still pleased with that one three years later, but looking at reader sites it’s probably my least liked book. Or at any rate my most divisive one. The most often disliked. On Goodreads it scores 4.06 compared to an average for me of 4.14, on Librarything 3.98 compared to 4.15 overall, on Amazon UK 3.8 compared to 4.2 for The Blade Itself and, for instance, a whacking 4.5 for The Heroes. Not massively significant, but noticeable, I’d say. Out of 69 reviews on amazon UK, it has 10 three star, 10 two star, and 4 one star. The Heroes has 56 reviews, with just 3 three star, 1 two star, and no one star. Obviously how a book scores on amazon is far from the only method of assessing its success, but still interesting. Some common criticisms, then, and whether they struck a chord with me having reread:
It’s not book four of the First Law. Well duh.
Monza isn’t likeable. As detailed above, there’s certainly some truth to this, but the degree of her unlikeability, as well as whether an unlikeable protagonist is necessarily a big problem, is going to depend on the reader. I actually found her pretty likable this time, or certainly relatable. She’s strong to a fault, savage even, but as the story unfolds we see she’s less evil than she seems, or even than she thinks, and not without her weaknesses, failings, guilt, occasional tendencies towards mercy for all they never do her any good. I actually think the little flashbacks that precede each part work really well, not only in breaking up the story into episodes, but in drip-feeding the reader a different interpretation of the past, one she can never present to others, or perhaps even to herself, she’s so trapped behind her own image of ruthlessness. It’s not necessarily that she improves so much as we come to see her differently as the story goes on. She gets no better than ambiguous, I guess, but she does at least get that far. More subtle than the way I usually tend to do these things, and asking more of the reader to rehabilitate an unlikeable character than to make them doubt a likeable one, but I still liked her and, much more importantly for me, since I’d much rather find a character interesting than likeable, found her deep and relatively convincing. I guess you could say she’s very masculine, fitting unapologetically into the hole that an ultra-macho male lead could occupy in this kind of story. She’s tough, self-reliant, hard-headed, ruthless, single-minded, decisive, arrogant, risk-taking, suspicious, manipulative, prone to verbal and physical violence, dominant in pretty much all her relationships. A man with tits, I think I’ve seen her described as, but that’s always seemed a really strange criticism to me, as though there’s only a certain range of behaviour within which a female character can be convincing. So Monza not likeable? I’m not that arsed.
It’s too bleak and nasty. Well, you can’t expect me to take this one too seriously, can you? I mean, yeah, it’s dark. The body count, certainly in the supporting characters, is way high, if not to say comprehensive. It’s savage. There’s a lot of intense violence and a fair bit of explicit sex and none of that is particularly … loving. Nothing is sugar-coated, that’s for sure. The scene with the eye may well be the most uncompromisingly nasty I’ve written, and Shivers’ plotline and descent into careless evil is, well, pretty horrible. Certainly I think it’s fair to say that there’s not a lot of warm human emotion going on – everyone is treacherous, everyone’s after revenge, most relationships are ones of necessity between desperate people and end in disappointment. But, you know, it’s about war, treachery and revenge. What do you expect? I actually think the ending is a good deal more positive than the First Law. There’s every indication that Monza is going to be pretty damn successful as a ruler. She ain’t touchy feely, but she’s pretty damn ruthlessly competent, that’s for sure. Related is an occasional complaint that this book lacks the sense of humour of the trilogy, and I must say I don’t see that at all. Cosca has some great lines but there’s also what I consider to be some funny stuff from Rogont, from Morveer, even from Shivers and Friendly, and Monza herself, though you wouldn’t call her jolly, can produce some acid laughs. Overall I thought the timing had only improved. So too bleak and nasty? Nah, just bleak and nasty enough.
It’s too long. I suspect this one somewhat depends. If you’re loving it you might think it was too short. The treatment had predicted a length of 150-175,000 words and the first two parts came in at around 25,000 words each, so had things stayed that way I would have hit the target with seven parts. As I introduced other points of view, though, especially Cosca, and the murders became more convoluted and bound up in larger plots, the parts (perhaps predictably) started to expand. In the end the book came in just a little shorter than Last Argument of Kings, somewhere around 228,000 words. It might well have been better to go for six, or maybe five men to be killed and therefore five parts, perhaps trimming one or two of the points of view, but I’d have had to make that decision pretty early on. Certainly I think, having gone with seven and worked out what the locations and content would be for each, I had to stick to the plan and let the book be the length it needed to be. I certainly don’t feel it’s bloated myself, it feels tight in the writing. I guess you could say that there’s always going to be a fundamental similarity between the parts – a man to kill, a plan to do it, the execution of it, onto the next, but it’s hard to see which part you’d cut – I made an effort to give each ‘episode’ a different tone, a different target, a different approach, a different backdrop, plus the broadening of the scale to finally bring in the whole politics of Styria works nicely, and the changing (or perhaps disintegrating) relationships within Monza’s dysfunctional fellowship move at the right pace. So, yeah, maybe could have been that little bit shorter, but no huge regrets from me here, except of course that I could’ve been paid the same for less work, curse it…
Generally speaking, I thoroughly enjoyed it. The writing felt nice and tight. A slight tendency toward listiness in some of the descriptions but overall I thought the settings came across vividly – worldbuilding ain’t especially my thing but I think I did reasonably well at it here, the cities are distinct and there are some very memorable scenes. I also noticed, or perhaps was reminded of, a few neat tricks of writing that I’d forgotten about – the seven men to be killed all have an animal with which they’re metaphorically associated – Mauthis a vulture, Gobba a pig, Faithful an old hound and so on – then the different parts all have a different style of imagery that keeps coming up – Visserine is full of painterly or sculptural metaphors, Westport of financial ones, and so on. Perhaps the first half of the book is a little stronger and more focused than the second, but I noticed nowhere where things really started to flag. The sequences in and around Cardotti’s House of Leisure I think are some of my best, really good use of alternating PoV, nice building of tension, nice description, nice shocks and surprises. That scene in which Cosca and Shivers select entertainers for the party I really enjoyed – funny, nimble, quick, delivering loads of information about the principals and their relationship while providing laughs and advancing the plot. Cracking multiple action sequence at the end as well, and I felt in general the action was varied and punchy enough to keep interest where it slightly flagged at times in Last Argument. Good pacing in this book, the seven episode structure worked well, there was a constant feel of cutting to the chase, the plot unfolds neatly and delivers surprises, the complimentary arcs of Shivers’ decline and Monza’s rehabilitation worked well for me, and there are some able supporting performances from Cosca, Friendly, Shenkt, Morveer, Vitari and others. The dialogue really sings at times. Of the four books I’d say I enjoyed it and Before They are Hanged the most. Probably this one I came closest to simply reading as, well, a reader would. I even felt that slightly mournful feeling when I finished it this morning. Ooooh, though, I wish he’d write another….
I recently reread all five books myself.
The only problem I could remember going into this book is how it is overshadowed by the fantastically clever the writing in The Heroes. As far as problems go, its a good one to have.
That said, as I read Best Served Cold a little slower than before, I found myself glued to it. Randomly letting loose a single bark of loud laughter in waiting rooms and on busses. Its a damn good book.
I have to agree with Iangr, the humor sets these books apart from the standard fantasy. I’d like to read Cosca autobiography, no need to worry about inconsistencies, I doubt anything he remembers is precisely cannon.
I read the comments on female characters today and I’ve only ever read one book that I took issue with, and that was a male main written by a female. I guess its based on the gender of the reader.
But I am worried that if you get any better at writing the universe may implode.
I will be the first subscriber, sir. I want a copy of Best Served Smoking.
You could publish them together in the form of one of those Ace doubles!.
( Actually, have you just given yourself a valid criticism of the book now?. You took the easy route with all the genders?. Bwahahaha. By Toutatis, we need this book writ )
I just want to write that ‘Best Served Cold’ is my favourite of your books, Joe: it’s mean, blackly funny, surprising, nasty, compassionate, and morally complicated. Best of all, it has Monza, a sharply drawn female character behaving in ways women in Fantasy novels are not often allowed to.
I enjoyed BSC more the second time around, and I really enjoyed it the first time. (I am doing my own reread project of Joe’s work as well). I am doing this since I have a bad habit of not putting down compelling reads and missing things in my haste to get to the end. My bad, I know.
But what struck me was the way the world was being developed with out the long slog process that Naith succinctly defined above. By focusing on each character’s actions and decisions, we are being lead into this world where we are seeing lines and alliances being drawn and redrawn in a not so classic showdown between the evil and eviler… where there is no good choice for a specific side to cheer for, but rather, you find yourself identifying or sympathizing with the least deplorable character. (Or not, if that is your thing.) Sorry, I can’t see myself rooting for the Gurkish to win, but Bayaz turning into a powerful megalomaniac and ruling over the world for all time would be difficult for me as well.
Other thoughts: Shenkt & Vitari…wtf? Can’t wait to learn more about their relationship & Shenkt in general…seems kinda badassed and has a thing for V & B bank/Bayaz…should be fun going forward. Monza…seems like she would like to be neutral and be her own person at the end of the book, but has already sold out to the Gurkish and is most likely to be in the middle of this world enveloping row…can’t see her being to happy in this position. Shivers…seems like he is developing his own little bloody split personality (aka:Nine Fingers)…lets see where that goes. Oh, yeah…and when will we see Logan again…
Now on to the Heros…
This book will always hold a special place in my heart. I picked it up before my honeymoon and read it every night in a seaside hotel in Ucluelet, a small town on Vancouver Island.
I really felt like I cared a great deal more about the characters in this book than in the previous efforts and I mourned the loss of Shivers’ idealistic outlook and his decent into ruthless barbarism, but that is exactly why the book is so good. Every glimpse of characters from the First Law series left me with a squeal, and at the end of the book I was left in awe with the knowledge that all of this will culminate into a much larger conflict between nations.
Thanks, Joe, for writing these books. They are, by far, my favorites. I am currently listening to them on audiobook format and am loving it.
Nicomo Cosca saves this book for me. And also Morveer, though I have to admit the only face I could picture in my mind when reading about Morveer was Wallace Shawn, who played Vizinni in The Princess Bride.
Monza was little more than the engine for this story for me. No Monza = no story. With Monza serving as the engine, it gives each character ample opportunity to shine. So it’s the other characters who round out the story for me and you can’t get any better than the rogues gallery of antiheroes Monza surrounds herself with.
Because of BSC, if you ever wanted to do a book of Cosca short stories (misadventures), I’d probably go Apple-geek over it and camp out at a book store. In my opinion, that’s how perfectly you’d written him.
Best Served Cold is my favorite book of yours. There’s something about the heist movie feel of it that that I love, and I still think Morveer is one of your best secondary (tertiary?) characters.
I love me some epic fantasy trilogies, but I think your current approach of single, standalone novels that explore a small part of a larger world are more rewarding.
“I love me some epic fantasy trilogies, but I think your current approach of single, standalone novels that explore a small part of a larger world are more rewarding.”
I done grammared.
I just want you to know, good sir, that Best Served Cold, right now, has my top spot of best books ever
because it’s the best book ever
there you go
Well, Best Served Smoking sounds hilarious.
I for one am happy Monza is a woman, and not only because it adds a layer of interest what with the story world putting women in general in the same types of positions they used to have historically (and not so historically…). It’s a sad fact that in a lot of novels, the male characters are by and large much more interesting and developed than the females. I certainly tend to identify with them more. But then, I doubt male readers would identify much with, say, a male version of the Damsel in Distress, whose goal in life is to find a worthy wife he can “gift” his virginity to…
Sara
You might be right. That doesn’t soon as good as ‘Best Served Smoking’.
Soon? I think I meant sound. Clearly a sign I shouldn’t be writing today…
Since Joe is not covering my criticisms of the book in his review, I’ll post them here:
It’s book four of the First Law: BSC it’s such a great book that I’d like to recommend it to everyone. However, they need to have read the trilogy beforehand to fully embrace the novel. A new reader would be lost when by the end of the book it’s unveiled that two wizards from of the West have been playing chess with Styria all this time. Plus, it spoils things such as Jedzal becoming king and Glokta being the power behind the throne. There’s lazy people who won’t start reading a whole trilogy after my recommendation, but I could have convinced them to read this book.
Monza is too likeable: come on here! Monza is cruel, vengeful and salvage. Under his command her sellswords did hineous acts and she never condemned them. You try to make Monza more likeable by shifting all the blame on Benna, but the older sister is as guilty as him.
It’s too nice and pleasant. For such a band of sellswords, murderers and poisoners fighting a powerful Duke in the middle of a war, one would expect a much worse outcome. Monza, Friendly and Cosca have as much a happy end as they could expect.
It’s too short. Far too short. When I finished I needed more. I was excited when I read that bit of information about Styria in The Heroes, and I can’t wait for Cosca to explain us the current situation in Styria in ARC. If Cosca is in the Old Empire now, I wouldn’t bet for poor Monza being alive.
I’d be one of those people who rate BSC the lowest of your five books. It’s because every viewpoint was centered on Monza’s story line; for any character in the book, it felt like there was only one essential struggle—whether or not to align with Monza.
Just read the part where a certain Duke wants a “shower” with Monza.
C’mon Joe, you really went THERE?!
Just kidding, I gotta love all the craziness thats goes down in the books.
This was my favorite of all of your books, followed closely by The Heroes. I keep recommending your books to everyone I know. Can’t wait for your next one!
Joe…
I LOVED this book.. (I couldn’t put it down….)
Yeah the characters are kind of bad guys…
(I was on their side from page 1 tho)
I come to your site often & I read your blog…. I dunno why you feel you have to say anyting the book’s detractors…
Honestly, I’m shocked that this is your least liked novel. When I first read it, I honestly thought it was one of, (if not the), best fantasy book I had ever read and easily one of the best novels I had ever read. In fact many of the common complaints I felt were good things and worked to the novel’s advantage. Guess that shows what I know. lol
Sam,
Well, I think there’s a difference between ‘feeling you have to say something to your detractors’, and choosing to assess common criticisms and seeing if you agree with them at all, and if there are any lessons to be learned. To be fair I’ve done the former as well, but I think in this case we’re looking at the latter.
BSC… what to say?
Well, it shook me a bit when I first read it, not at all what I expected after ‘First Law’ (this despite your strong hints). Took me a while to dismiss my preconceived notions and look at it objectively as a standalone.
Once I was able to do that, then it slotted right into a classic British dramatic thread – the unrestrained, murderous, nobody-has-clean-hands vengence fest. Think Titus Andronicus and blood-soaked Jacobean revenge drama. It fits right in.
It may well be your best book so far IMHO, though ‘The Heroes’ runs it close.
BSC is vivid in the sense that you feel you are watching events rather than reading about them, it has a very cinematic feel. Perhaps this is to do with the more linear path of the book as opposed to the mutiple plot lines of First Law. Your Wikipedia entry notes Tarantino as an ‘influence’, I can kind of get that.
I also think it was a very ballsy thing to do. Rather than write First Law part 2, you give us intrigue, mystery, tension, and derring do (or derring don’t in the case of Cosca) all served up with a plot twist Agatha Christie would have been proud of. Almost like there has been a shift in the genre, something which happens again with the stark focus of The Heroes, to be followed by the apparent western overtones of A Red Country.
Truly original.
Yeah, BSC works because it isn’t “epic fantasy” by itself, although it definitely is a cog in a much larger tale.
Its a personal tale about a very small group in a different part of the world, but at the same time could almost work as “The First Law part 4″ because it does move the overall plot along more than you’d think.
I’d say now that we’ve gotten an epic trilogy set in Adua (and lots of action in the north), a standalone all about Styria’s situation, and another standalone dealing largely with the north, its time for us to find out more about the South, and meet this Emporer and Prophet who we have heard so much about. BSC certainly set up Styria as part of this great faction that would presumably now oppose the Union.
However, I’m sure there is more to the Gurkish/Emperor/Prophet, than just being this invading slaver’s “horde” that they have been depicted as thus far.
The Union (Bayaz) while having essentially playing the protagonists thus far, we certainly know everything isn’t rosey with them. It will be interesting to see this “other side” the Union opposes.
Not sure what Joe has in store for us with Red Country, but I know it will be unique and highly entertaining as always.
I must say, Best Served Cold is often a reccomended title when friends ask for a good read. In fact, I’m nearly sure I am one of your best promoters in Arizona, USA! Monza and her personality was what kept me latched in from cover to cover, along with Shivers’ drastic mental breakdowns. Something I haven’t seen mentioned much is the fantastic view of Vitari’s soft side with her children. She was easily one of my favorite characters.
That said, I’m not sure why you feel you’ve a need to question your “women character writing skills,” but you have it down. Now I’m off to find my Best Served Cold copy and give it another go, while only complaining that it has a drastic void where Ferro could be! Keep up the good work!
I loved BSC! It was the first book I read by this Abercrombie guy, and made me a huge fan.
I picked up the book when I saw this reread was posted. I finished this yarn last night (tore through it in three nights) and my first thought was, “a refreshing dessert after the weighty First Law meal.”
It’s weird to me that is almost as long as Last Argument, it read fast and didn’t feel long (As I read it I wondered if maybe the font was bigger? and had larger line spacing?). There was a lot of ‘stoving’ and stabbing ‘to the hilt’ and faces being so close they could ______ that felt redundant, but I enjoyed it thoroughly. I laughed hysterically at the bone thief reveal in the end: lucky for Monza to have the Fist of the North Star as her Bayaz
My only complaint about Best Served Cold is Monza.
I just can’t force myself to like her, she’s too much Umma Thurman in Kill Bill…
There’s also that aura of inevitability that Monza’s gonna kick ass and beat everything into a bloody pulp, I never feared for her (or, since I didn’t really like her – thought that she’s fail), basically never doubted how the story would pan out- more or less.
To me, Logen, Jezal, Glokta, Shivers, Gorst, etc…
They all feel very “real”…
Monza just seems to much “Tarantino” IMO.
Being honest here, I still love the book, or I wouldn’t be posting here.
Yeah, I’m a Joe Abercrombie fanatic, and I loved this book as much as all the others. I’m going to pre-order my copy of Red Country in the next couple of days, can’t wait to crack it open. So that means that I have to read the rest of the books I’m supposed to finished before then or they’ll get kicked to the side.
As far as Best Served Cold goes, I think Monza is likeable, well she was for me any way. She kind of ranks up there with San Dan Glokta in terms of her cynical attitude and behavior to everything, including those who want her affections, i.e. Caul Shivers and Cosca. I think the best part of all the books Joe has written is that his characters just feel like real humans. Even though its set in this fictional world, its hard not to relate to their stories in someway, even if they’re not likeable.
The one character I would love to see more was Shenkt. I loved the purity of his actions and the brutality of his violence. He ranks up there for me with Logen Ninefingers aka The Bloody Nine aka the one guy in the series of The First Law world that I think no one wants to believe is really dead. And we don’t care how many times Joe kills him in some miserable and might I say, inglorious way…we want him back for all times. So if he did really fall to his death this time, we’d, or maybe just I would like a few prequels of Mr. Ninefingers.
This book was my introduction to the work of Joe Abercrombie and I found it amazing. I also found it interesting because it didn’t really provide any spoilers due to the way it was written. I went back and read it again after reading the First Law Trilogy and I enjoyed it even more and was even more saddened by Shivers descent into darkness.
Friendly was fucking brilliant and Cosca was so well fleshed out that he appeared 2 dimensional in First Law. Morveer was also brilliant (especially his regime for developing immunity to poisons) and I never really saw Monza as unlikable at all, just someone who had been through a lot of pain and was coping the only way she knew how.
@ Entity – I thought I was the official Arizona Abercrombie pimp! I even have the license plate BLOODY9 to prove it! ;P
In my opinion this was definitely on a par with the First Law books.
It was a completely different style, in a different location, and most importantly it was restricted to a much shorter final word count (being a single novel). That made it obviously a very different kind of book. I thought the way you developed Styria as a place was good, you seemed to do a lot of research into the historical parallels with N Italy and Germany and yet still it was a very character driven book.
I think the best part of Shivers’ character wasn’t so much that he descended into nihilism but rather that you took a minor character from a previous set of books and filled him out. That’s always something great in a novelist because it provides a strong link. I also love how you give glimpses of how the world has moved on as a whole since the first trilogy without having to bore us for a hundred pages with filler like many novelists do.
My favourite part of your writing in general though is the huge part that luck and everything plays in it. Since it’s SPOILERS anyway, I have to say when that box was carried into Morveer’s hidey hole at the end and he poisoned the crown, I had to laugh. It just shows that all the planning and cunning in the world mean nothing in real life. Sometimes things just go completely out of control, and you just have to ride the wave. It’s much better than the almost compulsive neatness some writers seem to come down with.
Thanks again for a great novel, definitely made a name for yourself already and in my opinion you’re right up there with Steven Erikson & co at the top of the fantasy pile.
I devoured Best Served Cold. Monza is well loved in my house. I loved every bit of her revenge plot. I love all your characters ~ but she stands out as a favorite. As a bookseller I try to get you off the shelves and into readers hands all the time. I only wish I could toss off my professional face when describing the books by saying : “Aside from the awesome plots, locations and battles, the best thing about these books is everyone is fucked up, nobody has redeeming qualities and yet you cheer for them no matter whose side they’re on. You want them all to come out well in the end. But they won’t. So don’t get attached”. I for one would be thrilled to see another appearance of Snake of Talins.
I loved “Best Served Cold”. I really enjoyed the triology, but for me I actually liked book 4 and 5 even more. I’ve read a lot of different fantasy and Abercrombie is one of my great favorites – a long with the likes of Erikson, Martin, Lynch, Rothfuss, Bakker etc.
BSC is definitely one of my favorites. I was honestly bothered by the incessant bleakness in the ending of the First Law trilogy… it’s not that every ending needs to be a happy one, but I hate when it feels like a characters growth is ultimately negated, and that’s what seemed to happen with Jezal.
I don’t always need a character arc to be a happy one (lord knows, I’m here after all
but I do want the arc to be effective. If a character appears to grow and change, and then when tested at the end turns out to be no more than that what they were before, well… that’s realistic, perhaps, but hardly satisfying.
Thankfully, I got more of what I wanted from the character arcs in “Best Served Cold” and “The Heroes”. For better or worse, when those characters are changed by experiences and events, it feels like it meant something. Monza is a different person by the end of the story, and Shivers even more so. And that made for good, satisfying stories.
I literally just finished this for the first time and I thought it was damn good read. For me, the books seem to be getting better as Joe progresses. Hopefully this can continue, though in reality I keep thinking that there’s bound to be a letdown at some point.
I like that “Best Served Cold” is a standalone story. Frankly, I’ve become bored of all the “epic fantasy” (with a little ‘e’) that drags on forever and ever. I will also say that I greatly preferred Monza over Ferro in the previous books.
Currently re-reading “The Heroes”–of the five, this is my favorite. BSC was a fantastic, unrelenting shock to the system for me; a standalone fantasy story with a bad-ass female lead? A Northman named Shivers? You’re bleeding characters over from the original three Tomes of Awesomeness?? What?? Yess!
As an aside, I agree with Reignmaker. I’m pretty damn tired of the fantasy trilogies (I don’t count “The First Law” in with this little personal rant–they read like three stand-alone books to me . . . and I actually read them out of order the first time through . . . silly blonde, I know. I blame shoddy shipping from Amazon).
“In stores NOW!! The stunning 3rd book in the long-awaited Golden Assed Elf quadrilogy!” Blech. BSC, The Heroes. Good stuff. Not to say I won’t read the occasional trilogy or whatever, I just don’t have the attention span to deal with what boils down to a sword and board version of Beverly Hills 90210. With elves.
I absolutely loved “Best Served Cold” of all your books so far it was the one that sang most loudest for me (I hope that doesn’t mean I have repressed vendetterish feelings).
Heroes was a cracking good read as well but BSC had that dark vicious undercurrent that is missing from most fantasy. GRRM is pretty close with his lack of care in killing off all your favourite characters but atleast you do it with a bit of fun.
Keep up the good work and damn you for only coming to Sydney, Brisbane and Adelaide in November. Whats bloody wrong with Melbourne? (grumps about having to buy a plane ticket)
I absolutely loved this book, but I introduced 4 of my friends to The First Law and none of them liked this as much as the first three! Universally, the complaint was that it didn’t advance the overall “plot” of the books, ie. the war between Bayaz and Khalul. I guess after the all-out thermonuclear inferno of Last Argument, the proxy-war between them in BSC seems tame, especially as Monza’s quest isn’t even revealed as part of that overarching struggle until right at the end.
For me, however, I think it’s a greater challenge to set up a world and try to play within its limits, going into deeper detail and filling in more gaps and backstory, than to shatter and transform it the way you did in the first trilogy. Also, the way the book is set up as a stereotypical vengeance tale and then the complexity of the relationship between Monza and her brother is revealed both to us and to her and undermines the whole reason for her quest for vengeance was a brilliant authorial coup. It’s like you said: nobody changes, but by the end of it the reader’s opinions of each character has changed completely! Well, one person kinda changes, as Shivers’s descent into lunacy gave me, erm, shivers when I was reading it. (I’m not sure if you intended us to think that he always had that evil bastard streak in him and it merely came out just now, or if he simply snapped when he was being tortured, but I took it as the latter.) Plus, in the final analysis, when you do get back to the “main plot”, the world will be so much richer and more complicated for the politics of Styria having been explored in this much detail and having Monzcarro as an active player in the war.
I’m not sure if you can win the people who didn’t like it over, or that you should even try. I agree with them that the book didn’t really advance the plot, I just don’t thinkthat’s a problem. I’m sure it’d make them happy if you went back to the main war as the central plotline of whatever you write next, but personally I wouldn’t mind if you went another book or two without tearing apart the whole fabric of the universe and reducing some major world capital to ruins again!
As always I’m way too late. Still I want to drop a line on this.
I’m a woman and I found Monza absolutly believable and true. She’s one of my favourite female characters at all. (While, I’m sorry, I really really dislike Finree.) Don’t trust those who say she is too masculine. They don’t have an idea of how woman are and how they have to be when they want to survive and work their way up in a male world. A girl would never have reached what Monza did. And still she has her weak sides.
The scene in which she and Shivers have that one big fight and she flees outside on the balcony where the wind deletes the flame and she throws away the lamp and screams out all her hate – truely. You cannot show a female mind better than in that scene. Simply perfect.
I’m really surprised to read that “Best Served Cold” fares weakly by comparison – I’ve not read “Heroes” yet, but I definitely think this book by itself was stronger and tighter than than anything proceeding in the First Law trilogy.
I only remember a single niggle, and that was a lack of sense of consistency about the city that has seemingly perpetual fog – which seemed to disappear after introduced.
However, the use of POV narrative that moved towards being in character, and the surprise of the overall story arc that Monza wasn’t anywhere near as evil as she had led herself to believe – the role of her brother in everything – was a genuine and welcome surprise.
Either way, I guess the bottom line is that you can’t please everyone – especially when epic fantasy is still served by a readership that seems to expect some degree of wish-fulfillment magic blasting in everything.
Anyway, I’ve just written a review up on Amazon.co.uk, so hopefully that will help raise your average.
BSC is one of the most blackly funny books I’ve ever read.
I don’t know how you make a compelling character out of a “thief, blackmailer, murderer of innocents, and keen practiser of incest, ” but you achieved it.