Spoiler Alert for The Departed, The Count of Monte Cristo and Les Miserables.... oh yeah, Best Serve Cold, too.
I finished BSC in October. My feelings are along the lines of Nonesuch's and soulsinging's. There was a lot of good story and good characters, but it did not quite work.
Revenge is always a great motivation for the protagonist. The problem is that Monza quickly lost the role of protagonist. Then Shivers became the protagonist, but he also lost it. I was not about to believe that Cosca was really going to become the protagonist. Was Friendly supposed to be the protagonist? Maybe. He was an interesting character... very defined. But really, I did not identify with him in the slightest. So the revenge angle was not satisfying because Monza had thrown away all sympathy. At least when Edmond Dantes used his hidden fortune to exact his revenge, I felt that he still had the moral high ground.
That was my problem with the story... Abercrombie left me without a relatable character. I understand he wants to be nitty gritty, dark, nasty, realistic.... but that is a major problem from which most of current storytelling in lit, movies, and tv suffer... no identifiable characters. By the end of LOST, I no longer identified with neither Jack nor Sawyer. The Sopranos never had any characters to whom I could relate... the show was well done and gritty and I lost interest. Martin Scorcese's The Departed had an all star cast and had a twisting, thrilling plot... but really who cared? All decent characters, except for Vera Farmiga's, were killed.
How about Les Miserables? Valjean stays the protagonist because he keeps the moral high ground in his decades long feud with Javert. When Javert finally figures out he's never had the moral high ground, he kills himself. Which almost brings me to the point of moving from revenge to redemption... almost.
Some of you may know me from my posts regarding George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire. Revenge is a major theme of that story. Some of it is fulfilled and some is not. But Martin, in my opinion, has kept my interest because for every five nasty villians, he keeps one protagonist. Or he introduces story elements to make his antagonists sympathetic, eg. Jaime and Tyrion Lannister.
Which brings me to the topic of redemption. Revenge is good, but redemption is better. Abercrombie constantly flirts with redemption for Monza, Cosca, Friendly, and especially Shivers. But in the end, all of them either reject it or deny it exists. This was a big let down for me.
Did you read David Gemmell's Legend? Compare the dialogue, the plot, the subtleties, the character developments of Legend to Best Served Cold. I'd say that Abercrombie wins hands down in every category. Legend was a very simple story with simple characters in an even simpler plot. Rek and Druss are identifiable characters in a crisis. Druss is dying. Rek is battling self doubts. Comparing them to Monza, Shivers, Morveer, and Cosca is like comparing a puddle in my driveway to the Marianas Trench. There is an order of magnitude difference in depth. But Rek, whose life was a wreck, is redeemed.
Don't get me wrong, Monza's struggle for survival, Shivers' brave new world, and Cosca's alcoholism are all relatable issues, but their moral choices left me misliking them.
His characters were inspired, but not inspiring.
I like the dark fantasy with gritty realistic elements, but some of the characters need to be at least gray and not all black.
On the positive side, Abercrombie's language, dialogues, and setting up of scenes was excellent. Friendly, Shivers, Morveer, and Cosca all had distinct speech and thought patterns. They were easy to identify and fun to read.
I always had strong images in my head of each town, each building, and each room. JA really does a great job of setting each scene.
He also set the twists in the plot well. The best device he used was in the dueling sex scenes. I thought it was Monza and Shivers for at least half of the chapter. When I realized they were having sex, but in seperate rooms with different people, I wanted to congratulate JA for fooling me in that manner. I had to reread it just to make sure I understood.
BSC was like The Dirty Dozen of Monte Cristo. There was a lot of good presentation, thems, and obvious skill in BSC, but it just did not quite work for me.
I'd recommend it to anyone who likes Machiavellian fantasy.
www.sffchronicles.com
