Review: The Devils by Joe Abercrombie

Blurb:

A brand-new epic fantasy from New York Times bestselling author Joe Abercrombie, featuring a notorious band of anti-heroes on a delightfully bloody and raucous journey

Holy work sometimes requires unholy deeds.

Brother Diaz has been summoned to the Sacred City, where he is certain a commendation and grand holy assignment awaits him. But his new flock is made up of unrepentant murderers, practitioners of ghastly magic, and outright monsters. The mission he is tasked with will require bloody measures from them all in order to achieve its righteous ends.

Elves lurk at our borders and hunger for our flesh, while greedy princes care for nothing but their own ambitions and comfort. With a hellish journey before him, it's a good thing Brother Diaz has the devils on his side.

Review:

Lord Grimdark has returned, and may he continue to reign supreme.

It’s been quite some time since the last Joe Abercrombie offering, but the man has not missed a step. With The Devils, his first published work outside of the First Law world, the dark fantasy master has released an absolute tour de force with all his trademarks: strong characters, witty dialogue, electric prose, gripping action, and a hell of a lot of twists and turns along the way. It goes without saying that this was my most anticipated read of the year, and Abercrombie did not miss.

Darkness looms over Europe, monsters roam the land, and plagues and famine run rampant. Summoned to the secretive Chapel of the Holy Expediency, Brother Diaz is tasked with putting a thief on the throne of Troy, and at his employ are the Chapel’s most deadly of thralls. But for the hapless monk, the hidden force is beyond anything he could have imagined: a cursed warrior of legend, a piratical jill-of-all-trades, a magician of the dark arts, a debonaire vampire, an anxious and withdrawn invisible elf, and an unhinged and sex-starved werewolf. With the apocalypse soon to come, the hated elves predicted to return, and ambitious princes hunting them to seize their own ambitions, Brother Diaz’s road ahead is one through hell. But it’s a good thing he has the devils on his side.

Abercrombie’s biggest strengths are on display in spades here. The character work is stellar as always, with a cast that, in a lesser author’s hands, would inevitably fall flat or run the risk of becoming too edgy, but in the hands of a master of his craft, everyone is given fantastic and well-realized character arcs that were a blast to read through. Our focal characters, Brother Diaz and the thief Alex, are well-developed in their own rights as bystanders in this strange and fantastical world, but it is in the person of the titular “devils” that the character work particularly shines. From the pompous Balthazar Sham Ivam Draxi, renowned sorcerer wizard magician, to the elderly and charismatic vampire Count Rikard (and all his tales about dumplings), to the hilariously oversexed Nordic werewolf Vigga, Abercrombie takes well-worn monster archetypes and pulls a brilliant twist on the formula, lighting up the page with all their antics and chaos.

Along the way, our band of violent misfits turns to a found family, and the journey to get there is heartwarming and utterly charming, even amidst all the blood and gore surrounding them. There are naturally individual threads that stand out more, from the shy elf Sunny’s budding relationship with Alex, to the cultural mismatch of the devout monk Diaz with the obscene werewolf Vigga, to the teasing and ego-stroking between the sarcastic Baptiste and Balthazar, to the implications of the forms of immortality between the stoic knight Jakob and Rikard. The connections feel real and genuine, probably some of the best Abercrombie has written to date, and the sum of these connections’ parts hit much harder than I had expected of them. Stellar work.

From a plot perspective, there is a bit of a shift from Abercrombie’s typical grimdark leanings and into more horror-infused dark fantasy, but the atmosphere remains as strong as ever. In some respects, The Devils feels more episodic than most of Abercrombie’s previous work, a bit more in line with Best Served Cold, where each part of the book has its “big bad” to tackle. While there is a central driving narrative, the more episodic nature of the book means that it does not necessarily feel as cohesive, with natural starts and stops as a new arc of the tale begins, but that’s hardly a bad thing. At no point does it feel disjointed from one another, and it instead feels like the first season of a well-written television series. The final episode—er, part—does move at a bit more of a breakneck pace than the earlier sections of the book, to the point that some of the endgame twists don’t have as much time to properly marinate, but given how enjoyable the rest of the book is, it ultimately is a minor complaint.

Put simply, I love The Devils. I held cautious optimism for Abercrombie’s first literary venture beyond the First Law world, and he nailed it. Say one thing for Joe Abercrombie, say he’s at the top of his game here. This series will be one to watch going forward, and this book will surely stand at the top of many a best-of list at year’s end.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna go call Balthazar a sorcerer to watch him shit himself with rage.