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101 of 105 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Was that a tear in my eye?, February 9, 2011
This review is from: The Heroes (Hardcover)
The Heroes embodies everything I like about the fantasy genre right now.
I was an English major once upon a time, and used to read plenty of serious literature. But as I've grown older, I have less patience for that kind of fiction. Writers of genre fiction, and fantasy in particular, haven't forgotten that great books are ultimately about great storytelling. It's about putting interesting characters in tight spots and seeing what happens. Everything else is secondary.
And The Heroes is a bloody great story. It's tightly focused on a single battle over a three-day period. The action is well done, but it's mainly the very flawed characters making good and bad decisions in desperate situations that make the story so entertaining. Each chapter has a point-of-view character, and the tone and style change, sometimes subtly, sometimes dramatically, as the story shifts between them. (The dialog and language of the northmen is just one example, and Abercrombie deliberately draws some humor out of this.) Each chapter reads like a well-honed short story, with a mini story arc for that particular character. I found each of the points of view interesting and entertaining -- there wasn't a single chapter where I found myself skimming to get to the next good bit, because every page is a pleasure.
There is a theme here (war sucks), but it's not heavy handed and adds some emotional depth to the story. I even had a tear in my eye at one point. But mostly the book struck me as honest, funny, touching, and vastly entertaining.
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44 of 46 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Need MORE. More books, faster damn it!, February 16, 2011
This review is from: The Heroes (Hardcover)
SOME VERY SMALL SPOILERS BELOW -
The book - Set in the world of the First Law Trilogy and Best Served Cold. Familiar faces return but have relatively small parts. The return cast includes: Calder, Scale, Black Dow, Shivers, Gorst, Bayaz, and a few others. Gorst it turns out, is one hell of a character. Trying to redeem himself after an incident in Styria involving the King, his blood-lust rivals that of some of my old favorite characters.
When I first read "The First Law Trilogy," I was completely blown away. This author has reinvented the Fantasy/Sci-Fi genre. Gone is the stereotypical "young sissy, in small town is attacked by unknown forces, distant uncle who raised him is killed, sissy inherits great magical powers/artifact/ability from said uncle, sissy becomes an ultra-mega bad ass at everything, raises army of do-gooders who don't ever die and eventually defeat the super duper evil army of trolls, orcs, and plum smugglers."
We all know the routine, and Mr. Abercrombie finally broke the tedious traditional fantasy outline. I'm not sure if he's the first to do this, but I hope he's not the last.
"The Heroes" is a great novel. Being set only over the course of three days is not as big an issue as some reviewers are making it out to be, as a lot of what has happened between novels is explained. Though I didn't care much for the outcome of the North, I still highly recommend this novel, even to those who have never read an Abercrombie Novel.
Of course reading the first four books that are set in this world will greatly improve your appreciation for this amazing story.
I know everyone will hate me for saying this but I do miss, with a fierce passion, Logen Ninefingers/The Bloody-Nine.
Joe Abercrombie now has a contractual obligation to produce four new books set in the First Law world. One book will be a stand-alone like this and BSC, while the other will be a trilogy. I can only hope that my favorite character makes an appearance in these upcoming novels.
The bottom line - Excellent book set in a amazing world that is populated by characters with depth.
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39 of 43 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Abercrombie adds another grand chapter to his world, January 31, 2011
This review is from: The Heroes (Hardcover)
There's no need to go into the premise of the book, which both other reviews and the solicitation material already describes. "The Heroes" follows Abercrombie's previous titles chronologically, so for any potential readers reading this, as no doubt other reviewers have stated, start with "The Blade Itself" and work your way here. You'll be glad you did, assuming you like what you read. In the event you don't like what you read, I imagine you'll be quite displeased. But like it or not, it's good stuff. And it's gotten better.
The essentials, for purpose of review and questions of potential readers:
- Abercrombie has made steady progress as a writer. His writing is more technically sound and is overall tighter. Words are worth more. His voice and the voices of his characters have become more sure. His ability to juggle multiple characters and an increasingly-numbered cast has likewise improved.
- "The Heroes" displays Abercrombie's improved ability to weave character arcs. While this has not been necessarily suspect, it was a slight problem in the initial trilogy, in which many, many characters came through as flat, and only a handful of characters had arcs and growth to speak of. This was less of a problem in "Best Served Cold," due to improvement as an author and his shift to a very tight cast of characters, and indeed, BSC had some brilliant character work and character arcs to show for. With "The Heroes," we find Abercrombie juggling a huge cast and keeping up with most all of them, whether major, mostly-minor, or minor-minor POV characters, and they all have character arcs, fleshed out from start to finish. While some of his peripheral characters remain flat characters, used to flavor a particular scene through previous mention of who they are, Abercrombie has raised some of them to three-dimensional status, with wants and small character arcs of their own, despite our never getting inside their heads. This is a vast improvement over "The First Law."
- Abercrombie is sticking with the same direction he's been going in. Previous readers will recognize why the situation is as it is. And previous readers will see as the story progresses certain similarities to how Abercrombie's previous stories have progressed. I don't intend that to mean him following the same gameplan of story construction, but rather the overarching happenings in the world. But no worries: Abercrombie is continuing the forward direction he started at the end of "The First Law" and continued with in "Best Served Cold." He continues to build and progress his world setting with this second stand-alone novel.
Of course, everyone's subjective thoughts will be different. Subjectively, I'm not sure I enjoy Abercrombie's return to using a first-person italicized thought-process for one of his major characters. While I felt it worked fine with Glokta in the trilogy (and don't currently remember if it was present in BSC), I didn't think it worked very well in this novel. But that is, again, a subjective, and therefore moot, point. Different strokes for different folks, and all that.
Overall, looking at the novel objectively per the points above, it's Abercrombie's best work to date. It's a unique read, with a fitting structure to it, and does its predecessors proud.
Give us another, Joe.
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