Review -- Best Served Cold by Joe Abercrombie

I almost didn't read Best Served Cold by Joe Abercrombie. I read his First Law Trilogy in the past, and I wasn't terribly enamored with The Blade Itself or Before They Are Hanged. I was wary when I saw that Best Served Cold was a standalone novel set in the same universe as the trilogy. However the blurb and the glowing reviews on the back cover changed my mind. Does Abercrombie's latest dark, gritty fantasy novel about a mercenary leader seeking revenge work? Read on for the rest of the review.


Best Served Cold follows mercenary leader Monza Murcatto who is betrayed by her employer for growing too popular. She survives the assassination attempt mostly by stubbornly refusing to die. Her brother wasn't so lucky. Thus begins Monza's quest for revenge against the seven men responsible for betrayal, culminating with Duke Orso of Talins, her former employer and the most powerful man in Styria.


Monza recruits a team of killers and fighters to help her on her quest. These include characters like: Caul Shivers a Named Man from the North, and apparently a character mentioned in the First Law Trilogy, Friendly the convict, Castor Morveer the insecure poisoner, and Nicomo Cosca--another character from the previous trilogy. Other minor characters from the trilogy also make appearances including a couple that were surprises.


While Monza and her team were well-developed characters, some of the others weren't. There is an assassin named Shenkt who shows up towards the end of the book. The man is an amazing fighter with abilities that are beyond what a normal human is capable of, but we learn next to nothing about him. He's just there, saying things about his revenge, but by the end of the book I had no idea if I was even supposed to know what his motivations were. And that was one of my biggest problems with Best Served Cold, even though it's supposed to be a standalone novel, I know there were parts that didn't make as big an impact because I didn't remember details from the First Law Trilogy. Shivers constantly names other Northerners that were in the other books, but I didn't remember what they did. Things might have been different if I had just finished reading the trilogy, but as it was, parts of the book felt like an inside joke I wasn't part of.


But enough about "missing out" on things. Let's talk plot. My trade paperback version clocked in at over 800 pages. Best Served Cold is not a short book, and while it was shorter than some other fantasy novels out there, there were parts that could have been trimmed. The first half of the book held my attention much better than the second half. Monza's early killings were amazing, and I wanted the book to continue on in it's bloody, fantasy thriller type of way. However by the end of the book, the pace slows down, and while some might say the big battles and sieges are epic, I felt that they took away from the more intimate nature of Monza's earlier killings.


More and more "big, geopolitical" entities and powers started interfering with Monza's quest for vengeance, and that's really when I felt left out. Remember the "bad guys" from the First Law Trilogy? Well they're kind of back now, because they're helping pull strings and start wars in Styria. And that guy Shenkt, somehow he's connected to them, and to one of the important "good guys" from the trilogy. Maybe it's just me, but I felt that this book would have worked better if it wasn't connected to the trilogy. The plot's solid, and Monza is an interesting enough character to carry it by herself.


Do I recommend Best Served Cold? Yes. It was dark, bloody, and brutal which are what fantasy tends to lack. There aren't clear cut "good guys" and "bad guys" in this novel, and everything is colored in bleak shades of grey. If you're looking for something different than "epic knight saves the princess" then Best Served Cold is for you. I place it in a similar vein to George R.R. Martin's work--visceral, not for the faint of heart, but worth it when you emerge on the other side.


Side note: I remember the First Law Trilogy having a map included. Best Served Cold needed a map. It would have made visualizing all these feuding city states a lot easier. Also the cover I used in this post is way cooler than the cover on the trade paperback version.