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I cruised through the first trilogy and really liked it, but Best Served Cold just didn't do it for me. Complaining follows: I just didn't buy the tainted love between Monza and Shivers, or Shivers' character arc in general. They never sold me on them as a couple, so seeing their relationship curdle just left me cold, and they turned Shivers into such a psychopath in the last third of the book (especially in that sex scene where he's punishing Eider in place of Monza) that I ended up mostly hoping that he would eat poo poo (so of course he lives). A lot of the characters in the first trilogy either needed taking down a peg or two or were living a lie of some kind, so it was cathartic (to me) to see them get dragged through the mud, but this story just felt like misery for misery's sake. He really ramped up the fake outs this time too. I was expecting some elements of the characters' histories to get withheld, but there were so many tricks and turnabouts in this book based on just not telling the reader what the POV character is actually doing or thinking (Shenkt is watching Vitari's kids... because he's their father! He's hunting Monza... to help her! Shivers is going to betray Monza to the Thousand Swords... to lure them into her trap! Shivers and Monza are loving... but not each other! Cosca's here to help destroy Rogont's army... except he already took money from the other side!) that I just stopped believing anything I was reading at some point. Also obviously this is subjective but sex scenes are not Abercrombie's strong suit and this book had what felt like a ton of them. Lots of hardening pricks slapping against thighs and fingers sliding between legs and making squelching sounds. Copies of this book must have come out of the printers sticky. If you're reading this, Joe, the chapter that cut back and forth between Shivers having angry sex with Eider and Monza loving Rogont where he asks her to piss on him at the end was a low point for both of us. Anyway, bitching over, but I think I'm going to take a break before I try the next book (bought all the stand-alones sight-unseen after finishing the first trilogy.) I'm probably just burned out from binging too many of the books in a row.
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Oct 8, 2021 00:56
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The Heroes is good.
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Oct 8, 2021 01:01
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Castor Morveer was the best POV in Best Served Cold.
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Oct 8, 2021 01:30
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Ccs posted:The Heroes is good. The Heroes is great
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Oct 8, 2021 01:39
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No can read good.
The Puppy Bowl fucked around with this message at 04:42 on Oct 8, 2021 |
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Oct 8, 2021 01:42
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I loved The Heroes and Red Country. Best Served Cold was good but didn’t slap like those two.
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Oct 8, 2021 01:43
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Yeah I'll definitely keep going. I'm just going to take a break.Hughmoris posted:Castor Morveer was the best POV in Best Served Cold. Morveer and Cosca were great. And I'm always down to see Jezal get casually humiliated.  My boy's meeting new people.
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Oct 8, 2021 01:44
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I enjoyed BSC a lot more on a later reread. Heroes and Red Country I loved straight away. Not sure if you're an audiobook person but if so give them a try. Steven Pacey does phenomenal work in The Heroes.
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Oct 8, 2021 04:44
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Best Served Cold is my favorite (The Heroes very close behind), but I'm a sucker for heists. I absolutely loved all the double-triple fakeouts and hidden info because those are heist tropes. I can see how people might be put off by it, but it's the one I re-read the most. All in all, the three standalones are the best. I think Abercrombie is at his best when he's targeting something specific to subvert.
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Oct 8, 2021 05:20
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The Heroes is S tier.
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Oct 8, 2021 05:30
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I read First Law and didn't really like it all that much aside from a few very good moments. The Heroes on the other hand is one of the best fantasy novels I've ever read.
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Oct 8, 2021 05:38
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Randallteal posted:Yeah I'll definitely keep going. I'm just going to take a break. How I imagine Jezal in my mind 
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Oct 8, 2021 06:27
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Your August gently caress-Hole... Also, the line Bayaz rules here, and he is bereft of conscience, scruple, or mercy is one I find myself repeating in my head during the day... substituting the name as appropriate, of course.
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Oct 8, 2021 07:03
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Best Served Cold is easily his worst book for me. Always surprised by its popularity. Too long, strange amount of purple prose by Abercrombie standards, all the characters are irredeemably monstrous and impossible to root for. He even did the cost of revenge arc better in the Shattered Sea books. I do like the idea of the good protag turning bad and the bad protag turning good, but the journey there just wasn't compelling. The Heroes is one of my faves. Where everyone is still kind of terrible but you can root for them and sympathise for both sides of a conflict.
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Oct 8, 2021 09:53
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Red Country is probably my favorite thing of his. I didn't immediately realize who Lamb was, so I had a huge 'oh poo poo!' moment when he dropped the "You have to be realistic" line on Shy. Just 'oh god, he's going to kill everything'.
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Oct 8, 2021 10:34
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Heroes is extremely good, and even better on re-read, for certain reasons.
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Oct 8, 2021 11:33
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sharp ends is still my favorite
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Oct 8, 2021 17:05
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Khizan posted:Red Country is probably my favorite thing of his. I didn't immediately realize who Lamb was, so I had a huge 'oh poo poo!' moment when he dropped the "You have to be realistic" line on Shy. Just 'oh god, he's going to kill everything'. I wish I could have read it this way, and not been spoiled by the jacket blurb.
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Oct 8, 2021 19:28
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I'm enjoying Best Served Cold more on a reread, when I have no expectations of the protagonists being better people.
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Oct 8, 2021 19:37
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Honestly the quality of the of the standalones sort of speaks to the problems of the trilogy. A lot of his payoffs would have worked a lot better if the set up had only been one book long. Orso being hanged and Zuri being an eater come to mind. The challenge is for those kind of set ups you need to drop hints throughout or it feels out of nowhere but with the hints the events felt obvious and inevitable. I don't think Shivers' betrayal of Black Dow would have played as well if it had been stretched out and overly hinted at.
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Oct 8, 2021 19:41
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The Puppy Bowl posted:I don't think Shivers' betrayal of Black Dow would have played as well if it had been stretched out and overly hinted at. The two biggest twists that actually caught me off guard are Shivers caving in the back of Dow's head, and The Bloody-Nine stabbing Thunderhead in the neck. I had to go back and reread the parts to make sure I understood what happened.
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Oct 11, 2021 03:43
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I'm gonna get a little C-SPAM IK in here if that's ok: I'm about a quarter of the way through The Wisdom Of Crowds, and so far it's really bothering me how contemptuous the book appears to be of the concept of populism in general. I had a whole long post about this in my head, but seeing the number of spoiler blocks ITT I'm trying to remind myself there's a lot of book left to read. It's just kind of annoying me how a series which is usually obsessed with showing all sides of every conflict, and which has had a scathing attitude toward oligarchy up to this point, appears to be presenting a popular revolution exclusively through the eyes of characters who hate the entire concept and always have, with the exception of Broad, who hasn't been a true believer since halfway through book 1 and now mostly just wants to go home and never talk to anyone ever again. The revolutionaries themselves, when depicted at all, are just kind of a mindless baying mob? Their leaders are symbolism-obsessed narcissists, with the exception of Pike, whose crusade against Valint & Balk is depicted as bad and wrongheaded somehow despite the fact that... it's actually a really good idea? We haven't actually seen any of the Breakers' original grievances expressed in detail since halfway through book 1. Is this gonna turn around or is there gonna be a staunch anti-populist overtone throughout?
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Oct 11, 2021 14:47
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loquacius posted:I'm gonna get a little C-SPAM IK in here if that's ok: I'm about a quarter of the way through The Wisdom Of Crowds, and so far it's really bothering me how contemptuous the book appears to be of the concept of populism in general. I had a whole long post about this in my head, but seeing the number of spoiler blocks ITT I'm trying to remind myself there's a lot of book left to read. i would have thought that being a cspam ik would have given you some perspective on the idea of the vast majority of populist revolutionaries being violent buffoons with delusions of grandeur
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Oct 11, 2021 14:58
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scary ghost dog posted:i would have thought that being a cspam ik would have given you some perspective on the idea of the vast majority of populist revolutionaries being violent buffoons with delusions of grandeur My whole "thing" is being really fed up with pedantic condescending centrists who acknowledge the existence of problems but exclusively shoot down every real or hypothetical attempt to actually address them in a meaningful way A lot of the problems with Risinau/Judge (obsessed with purely symbolic changes to the complete exclusion of making even the slightest attempt at material ones) are criticisms that could quite easily be made of centrist leaders in my personal and humble opinion of course
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Oct 11, 2021 15:02
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So far a lot of the details of this specific revolution remind me strongly of the English Civil War, which installed Oliver Cromwell as Lord Protector in place of Charles I, who he had executed; within two years of Cromwell's death Charles's son Charles was back on the throne. If you want to showcase a revolution without very much ideology behind it and which amounted to very little, that's probably the one to use as a model. I'd be super shocked if the superficial similarities lasted past the halfway point of the book though. I'm fully expecting some big twist I didn't see coming.
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Oct 11, 2021 15:07
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loquacius posted:My whole "thing" is being really fed up with pedantic condescending centrists who acknowledge the existence of problems but exclusively shoot down every real or hypothetical attempt to actually address them in a meaningful way your preconceived notions about where the characters would align if they were transplanted into modern american politics, and vice versa, seem to be distracting you from the content of the book youre reading
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Oct 11, 2021 15:11
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scary ghost dog posted:your preconceived notions about where the characters would align if they were transplanted into modern american politics, and vice versa, seem to be distracting you from the content of the book youre reading Leo (dan) Brock and Risinau are not 21st-century Earth figures, but Joe Abercrombie is, and choosing to write a series that is in large part about populism in the current era is choosing to invite people to read it as an allegory for the views of the era that produced it Fantasy isn't quite as often a vehicle for satire and commentary as science fiction, but I don't think I'm too off base to assume at least a little is intended here e: The original First Law series was pretty obviously a satire of the "wizards keeping civilizations as pets" fantasy trope originating from Arthurian legend and prominently featured in Tolkien, as well as patriotic and hypermasculine attitudes towards war loquacius fucked around with this message at 15:20 on Oct 11, 2021 |
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Oct 11, 2021 15:17
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I had some similar thoughts partway through the book, but I really recommend you keep reading.
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Oct 11, 2021 16:05
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That bit where the narrator directly started laying into the Burners for being obsessed with ideological purity over sensible policy decisions did feel a bit middle aged centrist dad on twitter
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Oct 11, 2021 16:14
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A lot of what people like Marx and Lenin wrote came through the lens of looking back at the failures of previous revolutions. I'm left wing and have some problems with how the revolution was shown but more about the writing/pacing than the political themes. I feel like one more book was needed.
Brendan Rodgers fucked around with this message at 17:32 on Oct 11, 2021 |
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Oct 11, 2021 17:01
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It does seem like a major theme of these books are “better things aren’t possible” so it sort of fits.
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Oct 11, 2021 17:35
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loquacius posted:The revolutionaries themselves, when depicted at all, are just kind of a mindless baying mob? Coming from a country which actually had a left vs right civil war, that kinda tracks. Like, leftist revolutionaries almost murdered and robbed the most significant leftist politician of the history of my homeland (who was wise enough not to join the revolution), because they thought he was dressed too fancy. And he was directly contributing to people not starving at the moment. Revolutionaries have a bad habit of getting out of control, even when the cause might be just. Addendum. The people putting down the revolution turned into an even worse bunch of murdering bastards as well though. Summary mass executions, revenge killings, mass starvation in prison camps, attempt at an ethnic cleansing and afterwards a general amnesty for everyone on the winning side, the works. Warden fucked around with this message at 17:54 on Oct 11, 2021 |
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Oct 11, 2021 17:44
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multijoe posted:That bit where the narrator directly started laying into the Burners for being obsessed with ideological purity over sensible policy decisions did feel a bit middle aged centrist dad on twitter They're not at all pragmatic. And the behavior in the hallowed Lords' Round? Simply indecorous! See, I like to get things done. *proceeds to get nothing done for forty years* I'm getting some Starmerite vibes is all. It sounds kind of like the focus shifts, though, which, again, I'd be surprised if it didn't. Just had to get this stuff off my chest. e: You could explain it away as these observations usually being made through the POV of Vick, who's well-established as the most cynical person ever born, or Leo/Savine, who are high aristocrats and also assholes, or Broad, who again just wants to make it all stop make everything stop, or Orso, lmao. But, again, there are no POV characters who DON'T have these kinds of commentaries to make, so they're the only ones we're given! loquacius fucked around with this message at 18:01 on Oct 11, 2021 |
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Oct 11, 2021 17:53
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There is a line later on that tries to justify why but yeah I felt the same about the revolution
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Oct 11, 2021 20:14
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How should the revolution have worked out?
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Oct 11, 2021 20:37
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Evil wizard drops a nuke
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Oct 11, 2021 20:48
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loquacius posted:I'm gonna get a little C-SPAM IK in here if that's ok: I'm about a quarter of the way through The Wisdom Of Crowds, and so far it's really bothering me how contemptuous the book appears to be of the concept of populism in general. I had a whole long post about this in my head, but seeing the number of spoiler blocks ITT I'm trying to remind myself there's a lot of book left to read. All the effective leaders got murdered, all that's left are the Burners. E: Terror Sweat posted:Evil wizard drops a nuke He already did that, nukes don't grow on trees you know Relevant Tangent fucked around with this message at 21:08 on Oct 11, 2021 |
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Oct 11, 2021 21:05
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I have a feeling (and I hope) that Bayaz will be wrecking fools next round.
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Oct 11, 2021 21:24
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Are there any fantasy authors who have written successful proletariat revolution stories? Even China Mieville, avowed socialist, didn't have his proletariat win. He just turned it into a metaphor about how the ideal revolution is always imminent but will never arrive.
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Oct 11, 2021 21:26
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Crespolini posted:How should the revolution have worked out? The most interesting outcome would have been Judge and Risinau overcoming their shitiness and building something new, it doesn't even have to stick around and the novel could have still ended with the Leo counter-revolution and all that but it didn't have to lead up with such a rote, boilterplate depiction of a revolution eating its own
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Oct 11, 2021 21:30
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