Product Description

Springtime in Styria. And that means war. There have been nineteen years of blood. The ruthless Grand Duke Orso is locked in a vicious struggle with the squabbling League of Eight, and between them they have bled the land white. While armies march, heads roll and cities burn, behind the scenes bankers, priests and older, darker powers play a deadly game to choose who will be king. War may be hell but for Monza Murcatto, the Snake of Talins, the most feared and famous mercenary in Duke Orso's employ, it's a damn good way of making money too. Her victories have made her popular - a shade too popular for her employer's taste. Betrayed, thrown down a mountain and left for dead, Murcatto's reward is a broken body and a burning hunger for vengeance. Whatever the cost, seven men must die. Her allies include Styria's least reliable drunkard, Styria's most treacherous poisoner, a mass-murderer obsessed with numbers and a Northman who just wants to do the right thing. Her enemies number the better half of the nation. And that's all before the most dangerous man in the world is dispatched to hunt her down and finish the job Duke Orso started... Springtime in Styria. And that means revenge.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7632 in Books
• Published on: 2009-06-01
• Released on: 2009-06-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 544 pages

Review
"The battles are vivid and visceral, the action brutal, the pace headlong, and Abercrombie piles the betrayals, reversals, and plot twists one atop another to keep us guessing how it will all come out. This is his best book yet." (George RR Martin )

Joe Abercrombie is probably the brightest star among the new generation of British fantasy writers . . . Abercrombie never underestimates the horrors that people are prepared to inflict on one another, or their longlasting, often unexpected, consequences. Abercrombie writes a vivid, well-paced tale that never loosens its grip. His action scenes are cinematic in the best sense, and the characters are all distinct and interesting.' (THE TIMES )

"A satisfyingly brutal fantasy quest. Best served cold? Modern fantasy doesn't get much hotter than this." (Dave Bradley SFX )

"Spiked with cynicism, and indeed spikes, Best Served Cold has as much in common with a classic Hollywood caper as it does with the rest of the genre. Moral ambiguity, hard violence, and that weaving of laughter, horror and pathos make it breathe, though the brilliant characters are what really make this soar. This is the highest grade of adult, commercial fantasy we have seen for quite a while." (Guy Haley DEATHRAY )

"Abercrombie weaves a dense plot, but not at the expense of the pace, and casts an ensemble of gritty, odd but always interesting characters to undertake Murcatto's revenge. Fans of Abercrombie's work will not be disappointed by his latest offering, which features all his usual hallmarks: cold steel, black comedy, fully realised characters and internecine struggles, both personal and epic." (DREAMWATCH )

"This is deep, dark stuff but it's a mark of that nice Mr. Abercrombie's talent that he can wrap such complex themes in the kind of rip-roaring adventure that is so utterly compelling that, from the first page, it is impossible to put down." (SCI-FI LONDON )

"All in all, we can't say enough good things about Mr Abercrombie's latest addition to the genre. It's intelligent, measure, thoughtful, well paced and considered, but retains a sense of fun that has flavoured the rest of his excellent biography. We can't recommend it enough." (James Rundle SCI FI NOW )

"Best Served Cold exhibits Abercombie's trademark black humour in spades, and the standalone novel form provides him with ample opportunity to show off his plotting skills but don't let the glibness fool you, the author and his characters do recognise the terrible nature of the violence being described, and don't try to downplay the human cost. Best Served cold is definitely this author's best work to date." (BOOK GEEKS )

"Of the great books in the genre this year, of which there are a few, Best Served Cold matches the best, without a doubt. For all its gruesomeness, its bleakness and its moral cynicism it is a rich, memorable tale, exciting and well structured. This will be a 'best of the year' novel for many in the genre. It is still a pleasure to see this author's talent develop." (SFFWORLD.COM )

"Abercrombie is both fiendishly inventive and solidly convincing, especially when sprinkling his appallingly vivid combat scenes with humor so dark that it's almost ultraviolet." (PUBLISHERS WEEKLY )

"Storms along at a breakneck pace. Each character has a history of betrayal and a wobbly moral compass, giving further realism and depth to Abercrombie's world. The violence is plentiful, the methods of exacting revenge are eye-wateringly inventive and the characters well fleshed out. A fan of Bernard Cornwell's historical escapades could easily fall for it. Believe the hype." (WATERSTONES BOOKS QUARTERLY )

"Abercrombies narrative twists and turns, playing with but also against the reader's expectations. His characters do likewise. Their realistic unpredictability means that it is almost impossible to determine what will eventually happen. One of the great pleasures of Joe Abercrombie's fiction is that his characters are so lifelike." (Maureen Kincaid Speller INTERZONE )

"Joe Abercrombie's BEST SERVED COLD is a bloody and relentless epic of vengeance and obsession in the grand tradition, a kind of splatterpunk sword 'n sorcery COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO, Dumas by way of Moorcock. Monza Murcatto, the Snake of Talins, could teach even Gully Foyle and Kirth Gersen a few things about revenge." (George RR Martin )

'Abercrombie writes dark, adult fantasy, by which I mean there's a lot of stabbing in it, and after people stab each other they sometimes have sex with each other. His tone is morbid and funny and hardboiled, not wholly dissimilar to that of Iain Banks...Like Fritz Leiber you can see in your head where the blades are going, what is clanging off what, the sweat, the blood, the banter. And like George R. R. Martin Abercrombie has the will and the cruelty to actually kill and maim his characters.' (TIME MAGAZINE )

About the Author
Joe Abercrombie is a freelance film editor living in London with his family.

Customer Reviews

If it gobbles...
There are characters that meet terrible ends in this book but if anyone suffered as much as I did going through the last 80 pages, I'll be surprised.

It wasn't just the size: it's sadly overblown but when you take the water and growth hormones out of this one, you're still left with a turkey. Plotting is weak and characterisation worse. The heroine moves from competent to drug-raddled then back to misunderstood and idealistic without rhyme or reason. It's set in a non-magic fantasy world but the plot is resolved by a Matrix-like deus ex machina without any hint of explanation. Otherwise the only miracle is a character left stabbed through the guts and left for dead who later reappears. His explanation for his survival with a wound that would be certain death in a pre-antibiotic society is he was given the best of attention.

I couldn't believe when one villain with the heroine at his mercy said "ok let's make it best out of three." This was in a climactic fight-scene so cluttered that it took me two days to get through it. At the end as the author starts folding up his cardboard characters and putting them away for the sequel, I could only feel sorry for anyone who has to go through it with them.

A relentless bludgeoning
I usually enjoy the dirty realism of Joe Abercrombie's form of modern fantasy: Brutal violence instead of gallantry; shades of grey instead of good and evil; characters who swear real swearwords instead of muttering `by the three gonads of Zutheroth'; sex! It's all dragging the genre into some semblance of credibility and makes for good reading.

However, I felt it was all getting a bit OTT in `Best Served Cold'. At times I found the novel a real slog - I felt like all the spilled brains and loathsome characters were relentlessly bludgeoning me.

Here's the formula: Big fight scene, brains spilled, people die horribly, primary character questions their actions again, repeat.

As much as Monza was an interesting character in some ways, I never felt any empathy with her and she remained distinctly unlikeable throughout. It was interesting that the repeated questioning of her obsessive quest (which I guess was supposed to add that all-important `dirty fantasy' moral realism) made me believe in it less. If someone is that acutely aware their actions were wrong, wouldn't they question them and stop? And is it terribly old-fashioned of me to want to be able to identify with the 'hero' of the narrative?

I did finish the book, but I felt a bit like I have when I'm emerged blinking from the cinema after a Tarantino film or put down a Garth Ennis comic. Is so much crude sadism really necessary?

This wont be popular...
...but here goes.

Thoroughly enjoyed the author's First Law trilogy, so was pretty keen to get stuck into this after a wait of a year, or so.

Have to say I was somewhat dissappointed. Possibly because this book focuses on the same group of characters for pretty much the entire story and because there is only the one main plotline, it quickly becomes a bit tiresome as it lacks any of the really interesting characters and the interplay of war, politics and magic that made the previous trilogy so memorable. I found that I just couldn't engage with any of the characters and ultimately didn't really care for Monza, her mission or any of her sidekicks.

Also, I'm no prude and am partial to the odd expletive, but the level of sex and swearing in this book is completely over the top, borders on purile and feels like the author is trying too hard to be "gritty".

The telling fact for me, is that while I couldn't put The Blade Itself et al down and read them in a matter of days each, it took me almost a month to finish this one.