Joe Abercrombie - The Heroes: May contain Spoilers

[Bugg]

I finished The Heroes last night. Thought it was fantastic. For me, it's easily my favourite of his books that I've read so far (having been a little underwhelmed by the First Law Trilogy - haven't read Best Served Cold yet)

 

[clippedwolf]

Best book I read in a while. Strange that some would label it "horror" among it's genres and not leave it at "war".

 

[Pedro Del Mar]

Finished this last week. Definitely my favourite Abercrombie read to date. I've Red Country waiting on the bookshelf.

HUGE Spoiler alert:

Love the world he's created and the characters. Real shame for me that Whirrun of Bligh was killed. I know it was inevitable but I'd have loved to have read another novel with him as the main character.

 

[thaddeus6th]

Feeling a bit like an amnesiac, but could you remind me who Whirrun was?

[I keep forgetting characters. Even forgot the name of the second most important one in my own bloody book once].

 

[Brian G Turner]

IIRC, Whirrun was the mad Gaulish figure with the huge sword that was handed from man to man. There were some religious undertones. On his death, the sword was supposed to be passed on, I believe. He was certainly an interesting character, not least because he believed in something.

 

[Pedro Del Mar]

Yes that's him - otherwise known as Cracknut Whirrun, he was one of my favourite characters with the Father of Swords that he asked to be buried with him.

 

[Pedro Del Mar]

He reckoned Shoglig had told him when he was due to die - and obviously got it drastically wrong!

 

[thaddeus6th]

Right.

Now I feel like I have premature dementia because I still can't remember him!

That's mildly concerning, actually. I read the book less than a year ago and really enjoyed it. Forgetting a name's understandable, but I'm surprised the description didn't stir any memories.

 

[nubins]

**********SPOILER*****************

He was the one that Gorst ended up fighting and nearly losing to about 75% of the way through the story. But during their fight whirrun was stabbed in the back by a union soldier with a spear. Gorst was furious he had been robbed of his glorious death/fight with someone his equal and whirrun was.. surprised.

 

[thaddeus6th]

Ah, that stirs a faint memory. Cheers

 

[JagLover]

One of his best books

One of the best depictions of war in a fantasy novel.

I do find it a little mixed in quality depending on who the POV is however. Every single sentence of Gorst's chapters are brilliant. The last being particularly exceptional. But with some of the other characters it can drag at times.

That said perhaps my favourite single scene involves Corporal Tunny who was one of the characters where the narrative seemed to drag. When he unfurled the flag it really felt the truth about why men put themselves through battles like this one throughout the era of professional armies contending for "lines on a map".

 

[Brian G Turner]

Finished my re-read today, and thoroughly enjoyed the book. I used to think Best Served Cold was the best Abercrombie so far, but I think I'll have to hand it to The Heroes now.

However, it does help to have read the previous books, by the way this builds on and extends them.

 

[Boaz]

It does help... especially for Shivers, Gorst, Kroy, the Dogman, Dow, Ishri, and Bayaz.... and to know a bit about the history between the North and the Union, especially who Bethod was and who Luthar is. And yet it's bittersweet to discover the characters of Felnigg, Tunny, Finree, Curnden Craw, Wonderful, Whirrun, Stranger-Come-Knocking, Reft and Beck.

 

[svalbard]

I thought this was excellent. Some of Joe's writing techniques and structures are really interesting. For example as the battle kicks off he starts with one POV and the as that character is killed, he switches to the POV of the killer and so on through the days fighting. I thought it was a tremendous way to describe the chaos of the fighting.

 

[Boaz]

Yes. I highly enjoyed that chapter. Compare it to the chapter after the battle in Best Served Cold.... where Monza and Shivers are having sex while the perspective changes between them.... until you realize they are not in the same room.... they're actually discussing betrayal, not of the Duke, but of each other.

 

[Brian G Turner]

I thought this was excellent. Some of Joe's writing techniques and structures are really interesting. For example as the battle kicks off he starts with one POV and the as that character is killed, he switches to the POV of the killer and so on through the days fighting. I thought it was a tremendous way to describe the chaos of the fighting.

It's an excellent sequence in The Heroes, but then he tries it again multiple times in his more recent trilogy - but IMO it ends up over-used and has limited impact because of it.