Review: Best Served Cold

Best Served Cold by Joe Abercrombie
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Joe Abercrombie sets the talent bar so high that I don't think there's a contemporary author who thrills me the same way. He is consistently putting out great books with such execution that I feel like there's a line in the sand with everybody on one side and Abercrombie on the other. Someone please prove me wrong so I have hopes for anyone else, because once again I'm delivered another spectacular read.

I originally read the entire First Law trilogy, and then I believe I read A Little Hatred next. I did find my way to the standalone novels eventually, but I read them in reverse order. I consider them to be the Shivers trilogy, even if he's only a secondary character in the 5th and 6th books. Reading it backwards, I already knew the results of a lot of things that happened and the future fates of certain characters so I would say that it does matter what order you read the books in. Shivers whole quest for revenge is more developed this way, for instance. As is everything that happens with Cosca.

I still love how cinematic Abercrombie's writing is. When you read about a battle it's usually one side goes one way, the other advances across from them. People hit each other, some fall dead. The heroes survive, ect. Not in these books. Every movement is expertly choreographed. The landscape and surroundings are all developed so it's not a battle on a random hill or in a building. You know every detail of the layout. Things get destroyed. One of my favorite visuals is when part of a battle ends up with people fighting in a river and the water is sloshing all around them. There's blood, sweat, dirt and mud. People are struggling for balance, for any sense of control. It's chaotic the way a battle should be and you can see all of that through the writing. It's meticulous and thoughtful.

Sanderson has lectures that you can watch on youtube which are all about how to write genre fiction and I would love for Abercrombie to have a series like that. Maybe a masterclass. It's fascinating to try to unravel his thought process.

There are many books about characters seeking revenge but curiously it was a nonfiction book that this one reminded me of. Vengeance, by George Jonas. It's about an undercover operation to get revenge for the Munich killings among other things but each hit gets it's own section. Just like Best Served Cold, not everyone made it out unscathed. I wonder if there was some connection there or if it was planned to be another generic, although First Law styled, revenge book.

Who wins in the end?
Does anybody?
The reader. Of course. I would recommend this to anybody but that goes for all Abercrombie books. September can't come fast enough.

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