Review: Best Served Cold
Joe Abercrombie has returned with his latest work, a stand-alone novel (something almost rare in the world of epic fantasy) loosely set in the world he established in The First Law trilogy. Obviously, Best Served Cold is returning to a favorite theme of Abercrombie’s: vengeance. Monza Murcatto, a tender and caring mercenary who sometimes goes by the heart-warming title “The Snake of Talins” or the even rosier nickname “The Butcher of Caprile,” serves as a mercenary general of sorts, loyal to the Grand Duke Orso. At least, loyal until he has her murdered for growing popular enough to threaten the security of his reign. Betrayed, broken, and left for dead (all in the first twenty pages, no less!), Monza swears that, no matter the cost, seven men must die. With Murcatto’s motivations clearly established, Abercrombie cuts loose with a bloody, thrilling, and grim tale of revenge that is always entertaining and often more thought-provoking than might be expected from the novel’s premise.
Best Served Cold may occupy the same world as the excellent The First Law trilogy, but the focus is much narrower; the entire story is set within the bitterly divided country of Styria (think of the violent struggle for power between medieval Italian families). Even though the story never travels outside of Styria’s many provinces, every region and city comes alive with its own unique flavor, and the story never feels limited by the smaller geographic setting. The First Law trilogy never visited this island country, though two or three characters traced their origins to Styria, so don’t expect too much overlap with the events of the trilogy. However, Abercrombie has included lots of cameos from characters introduced in his ealier works. This is a nice piece of fan service for people who’ve spent time reading Abercrombie, but I found myself annoyed by it at times; I’m normally not a fan of characters repeatedly cropping up from work to work, as it seems to shrink the world rather than enlarge it. Some of the appearances work better than others, and for readers new to Abercrombie’s literature, this isn’t an issue to worry about anyway. If you have the option, I would definitely read The First Law trilogy before reading Best Served Cold, as the presence of certain characters acts as a big spoiler for events in the First Law trilogy.
Where Best Served Cold really shines is in the characters who populate the story, a proven strong point of Abercrombie’s writing. Monza Murcatto is a great antagonist, and it’s easy to see in her the shadow of my favorite anti-hero, Inquisitor Sand dan Glokta: crippled, sarcastic, vicious, and deadly. On Murcatto’s quest for vengeance, she recruits a dangerous entourage, including several minor players from The First Law. Among these: Caul Shivers, a Northman barbarian looking for a new life less soaked in blood and death (you might remember Logen Ninefingers nailing his brother’s head to a door), Nicomo Cosca, a sometimes-glamorous, larger-than-life mercenary whose fortunes tend to wax and wane proportionally compared to the amount of alcohol he’s recently consumed, and Vitari, a mysterious woman-at-arms who once served with Glokta in the Inquisition before (presumably) leaving to protect her children. Add to these some truly bizarre accomplices: Friendly, an autistic, number-crunching, hatchet-wielding ex-con, and the preening master poisoner, Morveer. Some readers may have a hard time finding anyone to cheer for; Friendly, who has a penchant for chopping people into evenly-sized pieces, may be the most sympathetic character in the entire novel. But Abercrombie makes every person real, from the main antagonists down to the bit players, and the reader will see their (often dark) behavior as a real extension of their experiences, not convenient hoops to jump through as the plot demands.
The novel is neatly laid out in seven segments, each devoted to the murder of one of Murcatto’s targets. On its face, this is a very sensible way to organize the plot, but I noticed that the later kills tended to drag compared to the snappiness of the novel’s opening. The first revenge takes all of forty-five pages, and the next after that only sixty. But with more than six hundred pages, that pace can’t last. Granted, it makes sense: it’s easier to arrange the death of a common hoodlum than to assassinate a general or a Duke, especially when they’ve got a string of corpses warning them that someone has a vested interest in ending their life. As the novel ventures deeper in, there are more characters and details to keep track of, and the narrative tends to linger a bit on characters that I care less about (although this may be a matter of personal preference) than the core of Caul Shivers, Monza Murcatto, and Friendly. Still, the book avoids the obvious rinse-and-repeat style of storytelling when it comes to the assassinations; each segment is new and unique, and Abercrombie’s dark sense of humor really helps keep the reading fun, no matter how dark the situation or how bloody the battle. As the stakes escalate, you’ll find yourself wondering (with morbid anticipation) how Murcatto hopes to pull off the next big kill.
The First Law, especially at its conclusion, was an eye-opening indictment of the rut fantasy has fallen into, but in Best Served Cold, Abercrombie is less interested in re-interpreting the genre of fantasy than he is in telling a story of revenge and its consequences. The futility of revenge is well-covered ground and you can expect some fairly familiar lessons here, but a few plot twists and surprises await the reader. The journey of Caul Shivers and Monza Murcatto is a good one; their relationship and their seemingly futile attempts to transform themselves form the foundation of the story, and at times, you’ll find yourself cursing Abercrombie’s seeming cruelty towards his own creations, while desperately turning pages to find out what comes next. While not as dazzling as The First Law trilogy, Abercrombie has succeeded admirably in his quest to write an entertaining and fresh fantasy novel.
Plot: 7.5
Characters: 9.5
Action: 9
Writing: 8.5
Overall (not an average): 8.5/10