The Heroes - Joe Abercrombie

[Jenna, I'd be free if not for Temper & Edgewalker]

August 5th.

[Brian]

I’m in for this.

[Vaelin]

Yep, I will try by best to get involved for this one. Never read it before and want to be up to speed for A Little Hatred.

[Silvana]

I am tentative for this one as I have too many BR commitments scheduled prior.

[Rob]

I think this is still on sale at Amazon.com for kindle U.S. at $3.99. One of my favorites in the series (though some disagree).

[Shaitarn]

Did anyone read this? I'm ploughing through Best Served Cold as fast as I can and plan to read this one immediately afterwards.

[Silvana]

Shaitarn wrote: "Did anyone read this? I'm ploughing through Best Served Cold as fast as I can and plan to read this one immediately afterwards."

I am still tentative. My scheduling is getting better so let's see if on the 20th I could start this one.

[Rob]

I finally only just restarted my Abercrombie reread. Hope to get through all of them prior to the new release, but am only up to Before they are Hanged.

[Choko]

I am running late... I think I will start this in couple of days... I am sorry!

[Shaitarn]

I suck at buddy reads because I tear through books like this without remembering to post my thoughts!

I'm really enjoying it, but I swear every book is getting darker and darker! I'm getting worried as to what's going to be in the next book!

[Choko]

I am starting this tomorrow! Best thing about this series, beyond the writing, is that is completed. I am reading the second book in a series right now and it will be followed by 2-3 more, but they are not published yet... I don't think I have the patience to deal with incomplete series... :-\

[Slick]

Lol I smashed the series at the end of July, AMAZING.

This has somehow taken over as one of my best series of all time :)

[Silvana]

Starting this but might go slowly.

[Choko]

I just finished it! Read it 3 days almost none stop. I don't know why I had such a hard time with it 3 years ago and didn't finish it. I loved it this time around. It is very interesting to me that most really good Grimm-Dark Fantasy authors write a lot about war and all that comes with it, and by the end all of them leave us with the sense of how horrible and avoidable it is, if only there was the will... I love it!!!!

[Silvana]

Anyone still reading/in Abercrombie's marathon? I just got to 29%.

The chapter titled Casualties was pretty fantastic.

[Rob]

I love the maps in this one with the timeline. Rereading it with two bookmarks so I can flip back to the map to see the disposition of the forces and get a good sense of every character's POV as I switch to them.

[Zaara]

Bump

[Chris]

Started yesterday

[Beena]

Will be a tiny bit late to this, hopefully will start in a few days

[Zaara]

I'm already reading this but I'm also moving house. Be here in couple days!

[Beena]

Ooh good luck with it all Zaara!

[Niki Hawkes, I made it past GOTM... barely]

Good luck Z!

I love this one. I'm moving it to the currently reading folder for higher visibility. :)

[Chris]

I'm loving it. Steven Pacey is a great narrator for this series, so even though I own them all in hardback, I use Audible credits to listen.

I'm about 6 hours in, the chapter called "The Very Model", which is the 4th under "Day One".

This is setting up to be a major thrill ride

[Beena]

Finally started yesterday, sorry it got a bit late, been busy, busy.

Up to Black Dow (view spoiler)[ Great cast, old and new! I'm really liking Calder, I think he might surprise us for all that he's a coward and not a fighter.

And Bremer Dan Gorst, I love how he has all this internal monologue, never says what he's thinking and thinks he'll be mocked if he does, but it's the fact that he doesn't say anything which is his downfall. That encounter with Kroy's daughter was great lol.

Can't wait to get into some fight scenes! (hide spoiler)]

[Beena]

Ambition (Pg.104/ 21%) (view spoiler)[ Finree's great, love her sharp tongue. Ok, looks like I was wrong about Calder lol, he is a coward. And all this talk about shitting is waay too much haha. (hide spoiler)]

[Chris]

Shadows (63%) (view spoiler)[The introduction to this chapter is priceless. Mail the letter, Gorst! lol (hide spoiler)]

[Beena]

I'm up to Paths of Glory (Pg.163/ 32%) and loved Casualties which is a few chapters back.. (view spoiler)[ The way the point of view jumps to next killer and victim was great! Really captures the madness and chaos of being in a battle. And Bremer Dan Gorst at the end made me lol; I love you. I love you, and that is why I must smash your head apart. Pahaha! Love it! (hide spoiler)]

[Zaara]

Beena wrote: "Ooh good luck with it all Zaara!"
Niki Hawkes wrote: "Good luck Z! I love this one. I'm moving it to the currently reading folder for higher visibility. :)"

Thanks Niki and Beena! Also @Niki...really grinned at seeing just HOW chuffed you were as you held up your Anthony Ryan signed bookplates up for the camera. Felt really happy for you!!! All the best with your Nov-Dec reads.

Yah good call, Abercrombie is like all those best things you don’t do for a while and come back to and are like “this is so good…why did I leave it for so long?” Everyone he writes is so grizzled and weary and yet they’re all distinct and different and I love how he alternates layers: person, place, thing…luring you down a path with cunning lists (boy does he love writing short descriptive lists!) of these until you are hopelessly lost in the story and you don’t even want to be un-lost. And he usually does that within 3 pages!!!


NONSPOILER QUOTE FOR ALL:
“Aye,” the three of them chimed in, competing to sound the most bloodthirsty.

[Zaara]

I am sorry for posting late but I am reading along with you both, I’m at the end of Day 2. Life stuff and half my cargo got shipped, half is stuck due to bad weather at place of origin, Mum is a bit under the weather (its not COVID) and I had these notes partly typed but at the end of the day it was just too easy to throw myself on the bed and watch pointless videos of ppl making grilled cheese sandwiches (I love to watch ppl making white sauce when the cheese melts in the roux I feel all relaxed and stretched and melty myself…) rather than look up the chapter headings and type out my notes. My fault, I were frust and lazy.

Seems to me Curnden Craw should survive this book?? I like his POV a lot and this is always the first thing… it is tiresome that I get anal and spazzy like this? I haven’t even watched Armageddon because Bruce Willis dies nor PS I love you which my bestie keeps telling me to. Weirdly (and typically in the hypocritical ways!!!) I rewatched 300 many times: SPAAAAARTAAAAAAA!!!


Before the Battle log (NONPLOT CAN OPEN ANYTIME YOU READING)
(view spoiler)[

1. Btw this Shivers gimme the creeps and has come so far from the angry idealistic young man we first saw challenged Logen … and even his super scalded self from how things ended in Best Served Cold.

2. ALSO, when JA keeps saying several times the Heroes are (view spoiler)[ “standing stubborn guard over nothing” you kinda wonder why they’re there…

This maybe a bit farout for JA given how low magic he is unless it’s the Gurkhishand their slinkeries BUT…BUT…BUT on a scale of one to impossible…how hopeful are we that we may get corpses of the long dead rising from barrows in the LOTR ways? Especially since it also says: “it sprouted alone from the flat vealley, so much alone and so oddly smooth a shape that it seemed almost a thing manmade.” (hide spoiler)] Do you think there could be a big trapdoor event?

3. Bayaz is always impressive when he turns up in cameos, winds everybody up into a ravening froth, lets the shint fly and then calmly exit from scene (view spoiler)[ I’ll never forget the time he walked into a room naked and turned three humans into bloody strips of meat simply by screaming at them lungs out… (hide spoiler)] (hide spoiler)]

[Zaara]

Gorst POV: (view spoiler)[ he's hysterical, he's hanging by a thread, and my god, nobody will guess...anyway... I tried to cheat and look up the First Law Wiki as to what Bremer Dan Gorst did that was so disgraceful turned him so bitter and jacked him up so bad… at first I think he got brutally dumped in the Shae manner but… well, is all vague but I looked spoilersy stuff enough to reckon we will come to the specifics when we read Sharp Ends. That’s the one I am most impatient for since I’ve never yet read an Abercrombie short. Do any of you guys know/remember? (hide spoiler)]

ADDED MUCH LATER: As I type this, it has been almost a week and you guys hv prolly finished but I am only now nearing open when you reach the end of Day 2 and Bremer's (view spoiler)[ self loathing inner talk in italics started out super funny but is getting a bit tiresome and doom laden as the book progresses and somehow reminiscent of Glokta but without the weight and Glokta-ness. Glokta was somehow pungent despite everything and this Bremer is just deeply depressed and so angry at the world. The writing is very well done skillfully and so economically…the loneliness, the rage, even the frust/horniness/lovelustwhatever… I keep thinking wtf happened, but whatever it was he were best helped by leaving it behind instead of stewing.

I wish he would and be less hard on himself. By now, I wanna shake him cuz it's obvious Finree doesn't know or care or if she did, she wouldnt give a flying funk... (hide spoiler)]

[Zaara]

Day 1
For sure… sometimes don’t you think JA lives to write bast@rdy dialogue and fight scenes and the rest is all connective tissue?
Ours not to reason why: Btw I love his choice of chapter headings…such a fuckin evil STING everytime, this one was the Charge of the Light Brigade, correct? (view spoiler)[ but god, I wanted to *facepalm* over that stuff-up with the horses….aaaarrrrggh….!!!! (hide spoiler)]

Tunny is such a fun kind of a douchebag to read, his philosophizing at the end of this chapter…reading it I felt like Abercrombie would have had those lines in his head as a brief THOU SHALT WRITE A CROSS SECTION OF WAR and from it grew…this whole book…and actually a large part of everything he writes. I’ll try and see if I can find the para all typed out online and paste it since it’s a big one to type out:



“This is stupid."

"Look. You think how stupid people are most of the time. Old men drink. Women at a village fair. Boys throwing stones at birds. Life. The foolishness and the vanity, the selfishness and the waste. The pettiness, the silliness. You think in war it must be different. Must be better. With death around the corner, men united against hardship, the cunning of the enemy, people must think harder, faster, be...better. Be heroic.

Only it's just the same. In fact do you know, because of all that pressure, and worry, and fear, it's worse. There aren't many men who think clearest when the stakes are highest. So people are even stupider in war than the rest of the time. Thinking about how they'll dodge the blame, or grab the glory, or save their skins, rather than about what will actually work. There's no job that forgives stupidity more than soldiering. No job that encourages it more.”

― Joe Abercrombie, The Heroes


Chris wrote: "I'm loving it. Steven Pacey is a great narrator for this series, so even though I own them all in hardback, I use Audible credits to listen."

I have all the physicals except Shapr Ends and the new trilogy but am currently reading from ebook since it’s easier packed.

1. Cry Havoc and
(view spoiler)[ For sure one alliance is Dow’s camp is gonna backstab and/or someone in the Union will defect...only I wonder who it will be…too early to tell… (hide spoiler)]

2. Whirrun… I normally REALLY like them loony as a coot chars:



but something about this guy is like looking at a wedgie on a stranger riding the subway the kind who don’t look too friendapproachable.... you wanna fix it but really don’t know what to say…


Beena wrote: "Can't wait to get into some fight scenes!"

3. Aaaahhh his battle scenes: “More horns, and then came the feet, like distant thunder mixed with metal.” He really puts you there, doesn’t he? Whereas Eriksen is just a bit harder to imagine some of his…I can’t really see a ship being dragged thru a warren by a giant dragon…or something…or what a Jaghut Guardian precisely looks like. So anyway I wonder what they will come out with if these two collaborate…..

4. All these poor schmucks and their alternating POVs……..

[Zaara]

Day 2

Chains of Command (view spoiler)[ Ok this chapter made me angry. It doesn’t matter who does this it annoys me that they make us care about a char only to kill them off and feast on the pain sluttery of humanity as a whole to turn the pages faster. Bloody heck, why did he have to kill that poor little Lederlingen…why create that poor kid just to make elicit a few laughs by making a mockery of his name in bawdy little ways and then just poof, wipe him out…this small child didn’t deserve to die. I’m annoyed ok? Also its being a bit more-ish like fight after fight…and bla bla so JA is like going to Maccas and getting the hash brown which I loved as a child and its warm and comforting and familiarly gory to split skulls and bind up your wounds with spit and gristle but sometimes…its all starting to get a bit same-y. Why do authors do this? It were not just Sanderson whom I blamed overly. Did this not piss any of you off that he got uselessly sent back and forth a bog and didn’t eat anything for days and died over a piece of paper?

Rant over. I’m sorry I was the Karen.
(hide spoiler)]

My favourite POV in this section of the book surprisingly turned out to be Calder who reminded me so strongly of Jalan Kendeth from Red Queen’s War. Weren;t you guys getting that vibe?

Straight Edge: Altho also these are such interesting developments with (view spoiler)[ Black Dow and Crunden Craw (hide spoiler)]… I like how this track is shaping up…(view spoiler)[ I think it will either make Shivers defect OR Black Dow signed his own death warrant by agreeing to parley with the Union bcuz Ishiri (the Gurkhish) and Bayaz will not want peace and they are the actual warmongers here… (hide spoiler)]


Strange Bedfellows/One Day More (view spoiler)[ I must admit I didn’t see much point of the Finree/Aliz POV until she/they got kidnapped. Huh, for sure her marriage is now gonna go in the cr@pper and now… things seemed spoilt at the end of this chapter. I thought this was nicely done… that the casualties aren’t just physical… (hide spoiler)]

It’s a bloody setup for Day 3…yup for sure, things are at an interesting point.

[Zaara]

Huh, you guys are still reading and I was not late!

[Zaara]

I finished. How are you guys getting on or are you stalling? I feel like a lot of ppl found it’s kinda hard to comment on this book, no?

ENDBOOK

(view spoiler)[

Everytime I start a new Abercrombie I think “how did I not get back to this world and this man’s work for so long” but by the time I finish I feel like I’ve had about enough of a dose for the moment…a youtuber I follow (Sufficeintly Advanced Lena) says it’s because she’s a more plot-driven reader and Abercrombie’s work is definitely character driven.

Anyway. I felt like this one lurched from fight scene to fight scene sorta like something a war correspondent or a referee would produce with bits of spit and gristle holding it together written in the lampooning cartoon-y New Yorker/Charlie Hebdo on ‘shrooms vein…

Too that some of his chars are beginning to feel like rinse and repeats: the reluctant fighter pulled into events/how the mighty are fallen/the turncoat/the figurehead/the windbag/the bloke consumed by bitterness etc etc.

Ditto with the themes. That said, I started using the maps a lot more after reading Rob’s comment on this thread and it did add to my enjoyment of the story blow by blow. I don’t think this guy has ever written a bad book, but it’s just this one was a bit more-ish/same-y than I expected. (hide spoiler)]

[Laura Tenfingers]

Zaara wrote: "I finished. How are you guys getting on or are you stalling? I feel like a lot of ppl found it’s kinda hard to comment on this book, no?

ENDBOOK (view spoiler)[

I'm with you Zaara. I liked it but didn't love it. Best Served Cold was better imo and Red Country, I really really loved! (hide spoiler)]

[Chris]

I was pushing along nicely and got to Day Three before the wheels came off and last week derailed me at home.

It is a bit difficult to comment on, yeah. I've agreed with what's been said, but hadn't had much to add...

[Beena]

@Zaara, Ugh, I was in the middle of replying to this earlier then fecking work got in the way. I finished yesterday and agree I didn't really have much to say. I wasn't ignoring you before btw, just saw you were a bit further and thought to catch up first but there wasn't much left anyway and thought might as well finish it.

(view spoiler)[ Yeah, this Shivers is sooo creepy!! Definitely comes across as the cold blooded killer.

Bremer's [ self loathing inner talk in italics started out super funny but is getting a bit tiresome and doom laden as the book progresses

Yep, completely agree! I enjoyed it at first but it really shows his true colours and just how bitter and angry he is.

Don’t you think JA lives to write bast@rdy dialogue and fight scenes and the rest is all connective tissue

That's the best though! Lol

Ha, I liked Whirrun and Stranger Come Knocking (what a great name btw) who was similar.

Aaaahhh his battle scenes: “More horns, and then came the feet, like distant thunder mixed with metal.” He really puts you there, doesn’t he?

Yeah very much so, you actually experience it rather than observe it.

Sorry Zaara, can't say that I felt anything about Lederlingen, there just wasn't enough screen time or bonding to him for me to really be fussed.

RE Calder- The likeness to Jalan actually didn't cross my mind, but now that you mention it they are quite similar. If I remember correctly, Jalan wasn't ambitious like Calder was though, he didn't want power or responsibility, he just wanted to fuck about lol. But yeah definitely in the way that they behave and talk. I really liked him too, thought that was a nice ending him giving the crown over to Scale.

End of book: Everytime I start a new Abercrombie I think “how did I not get back to this world and this man’s work for so long” but by the time I finish I feel like I’ve had about enough of a dose for the moment…a youtuber I follow (Sufficeintly Advanced Lena) says it’s because she’s a more plot-driven reader and Abercrombie’s work is definitely character driven.

Yeahhh I feel exactly the same, like I love the way he writes, but the stories never really capture me completely, there's always something a bit off...

I mean it's been long enough between Abercrombie reads that I start to forget what the others were like anyway lol apart from a vague impression.

Lol, I couldn't make heads or tails of the maps, I was reading on my Kindle and everything was miniscule so I just flipped past.

For me, it's not that it was samey, it's more that there wasn't anything for me to really root for in it and therefore I wasn't driven to read. (hide spoiler)]

[Beena]

Agreed Laura, I enjoyed Best Served Cold SO much more.

[Laura Tenfingers]

Beena wrote: "Stranger Come Knocking (what a great name btw)..."

Ha! Yes! Favourite character names: Stranger Come Knocking and Willful Murder from The Red Knight.

[Laura Tenfingers]

Are you guys and gals going to continue the series? I'm gazing longingly at A Little Hatred...but will hold myself back if you guys are on your way.😁

[Beena]

Soz Laura, I think it will be a while again before I continue, seems to be the way with Abercrombie for me..

Ha, Wilful Murder, that's a good one!

[Chris]

I'm in for Red Country, but would like to wait until the new year so we can count it for competition points. I have a ton of heavy books that are half finished that will hang around my neck like an albatross half the year as they won't count for points and my motivation to finish them dwindles.

[Zaara]

Laura Tenfingers wrote: "Beena wrote: "Stranger Come Knocking (what a great name btw)..."

Ha! Yes! Favourite character names: Stranger Come Knocking and Willful Murder from The Red Knight."

+1

[Zaara]

Chris wrote: "I'm in for Red Country, but would like to wait until the new year so we can count it for competition points. I have a ton of heavy books that are half finished that will hang around my neck like an..."

Agree. I have some big books in Jan too that I've really been wanting to get to. And the BE reread in Feb. And I don;t think the Abercrombie withdrawal symptoms will get unmanageable for some time yet. Heroes was so underwhelming. I dunno HOW I can;t fault it for what it is and yet, I know what it could have been and...AAAAH Joe is maddening with this one.

And Laura, go for it if you really want to, don't hold back on the mood because we still have Red Country AND Sharp Ends.

[Zaara]

Is this just me or did this thread grow feet and an invisibility cloak? ;)