Best Served Cold

As the title indicates, this is a story about revenge. A mercenary leader serving an ambitious warlord is shockingly betrayed and her brother murdered. She sets out to kill the seven people who were complicit in this act of brutal betrayal. The planning and execution of each kill gives the book a nice rhythm... although "nice" is probably not a word to use when talking about Abercrombie's creations, where the darker side of humanity tends to dominate. Who is a good person, how do you become one, what makes a good person turn bad? These are the questions posed by the characters in this book. The answers aren't simple, and Abercrombie's world is, as ever, bleaker than the one I WANT to believe in. But he invites you to take a walk in the dark side, and his shadowy paths are lavishly constructed.

I am usually a fan of 'out of 5' rating systems but this was hard. I really enjoyed Best Served Cold, the characters were interesting, the plot twists and turns nicely with the threads tangling together nicely at the end - it has everything I want from this type of fantasy book.... it is just not a 5* book.... A high 4?

This took me a long time to finish. Started as an audiobook, and didn't touch it for Jan-Feb. This is too close to the grimdark side of things, compared to what I usually read (Sanderson, Rothfuss, GRRM, ...). I enjoyed the revenge part of things, and while there were some really memorable characters, the author spends too much time shitting about the world.

Which is fine to a point, till when every second scene has a character going into a similar monologue about the world being fucked and everything being unfair. The book does pick up pace somewhat towards the end, and has a really nice character reveal (which I somehow completely missed). 3/5

Maybe I should have tried the First Law Trilogy before trying this.