Saturday 5 February 2011

JOE ABERCROMBIE-THE HEROES

Abercrombies best work to date. Whilst prose will never be his strongest point its improved greatly since the rather clunky debut 'The Blade Itself.' Instead of the usual rambling journey all to common in fantasy (there and back again) The Heroes focuses on one three day battle. This allows Abercrombie to ram home a strong message on the folishness of glamourising war and violence without raming home that message down our throats, quite an achievement. The author has always had a knack for subverting the genre in amusing fashion and creating funny, larger than life characters whilst still ensuring that they remain relatively believeable. But there's always been a slightly juvenile feel to his writing before, in Best Served Cold, his previous novel a supporting characters bowels release after her death causing her killers nose to wrinkle in disgust. It did me as well and I've read Terry Goodkind. This accusation can't be levelled against The Heroes however as its an all together more mature work. In fact I feel its the first time the author has asked us to take him seriously.