Best Served Cold by Joe Abercrombie
In Best Served Cold by Joe Abercrombie, Monza is the leader of a very successful and murderous band of mercenaries. She's employed by a duke who wants to be ruler of everything, and she's been successful in her campaigns and loyal to the duke who currently pays her so didn't expect it at all when the duke and some of his supporters murdered her brother in front of her and did their damnedest to kill her as well. More genre-savvy men might have made sure she was dead before they threw her badly injured body down a mountain but, to be fair, they'd really messed her up with a garroting, stabbings, and crushing her dominant hand before throwing her down a very tall cliff that snaps and shatters a lot of her bones. They couldn't have known that her brother's corpse would break her fall a little or that a somewhat disturbed doctor would bring her mangled body somewhere to work on.
The experience has left Monza a weaker and still somewhat mangled mess, given her an understandable addiction to narcotics, and made her burn with rage and grief and a very strong need for vengeance.
This book left me rather disappointed, the more so for how it started out so strong and involving. Around the time when she starts hiring a misfit group to help her take out the people who killed her brother and so horribly wronged her the story starts to meander somewhat, as if the narration gets stuck in a quagmire just as she gets stuck in a quagmire of moral compromises and unexpected obstacles that lead to a much higher bodycount than she wanted. Unfortunately, that's a lot of the book.
It doesn't help that I started to feel contempt for Monza. She makes some bad, stupid, and cowardly decisions and mistreats some people in unnecessary ways. Abercrombie shows us that she's not as heartless and murderous as her reputation suggests but does it by making her a ridiculously bad judge of character. I know it was her brother and family can fall into your blindspot, but c'mon. I didn't appreciate how she reacted to what happened to Shivers either.
There are times when Abercrombie's narration suggests certain things about characters, only to have it be totally wrong later. Thus, whole subplots turn out to be red herrings. It's a bit like getting suddenly slapped in the face and leaves you wondering, "What was that for?!"
Also, after all the obstacles put in their way throughout the book the very neat ending wrap-up for all the surviving characters feels wrong.
That said, I appreciated that Monza is really messed up by the physical damage done to her: she has a limp from the bone fractures and breaks in her legs, her dominant right hand is such a mess after being so badly cut and somewhat crushed that she has to do almost everything left-handed and her right hand pinky no longer bends, her skull is patched up by coins in places, her jaw remains tight, and she lives with daily pain and an addiction to a narcotic called "husk."
I know that authors generally have little say in the cover art, but it was a nice surprise that the cover art suggests some of that damage.
It actually hurt my enjoyment of the book more that it started out with such strength and potential, then squandered much of it, instead of being a disappointment all the way through.
The experience has left Monza a weaker and still somewhat mangled mess, given her an understandable addiction to narcotics, and made her burn with rage and grief and a very strong need for vengeance.
This book left me rather disappointed, the more so for how it started out so strong and involving. Around the time when she starts hiring a misfit group to help her take out the people who killed her brother and so horribly wronged her the story starts to meander somewhat, as if the narration gets stuck in a quagmire just as she gets stuck in a quagmire of moral compromises and unexpected obstacles that lead to a much higher bodycount than she wanted. Unfortunately, that's a lot of the book.
It doesn't help that I started to feel contempt for Monza. She makes some bad, stupid, and cowardly decisions and mistreats some people in unnecessary ways. Abercrombie shows us that she's not as heartless and murderous as her reputation suggests but does it by making her a ridiculously bad judge of character. I know it was her brother and family can fall into your blindspot, but c'mon. I didn't appreciate how she reacted to what happened to Shivers either.
There are times when Abercrombie's narration suggests certain things about characters, only to have it be totally wrong later. Thus, whole subplots turn out to be red herrings. It's a bit like getting suddenly slapped in the face and leaves you wondering, "What was that for?!"
Also, after all the obstacles put in their way throughout the book the very neat ending wrap-up for all the surviving characters feels wrong.
That said, I appreciated that Monza is really messed up by the physical damage done to her: she has a limp from the bone fractures and breaks in her legs, her dominant right hand is such a mess after being so badly cut and somewhat crushed that she has to do almost everything left-handed and her right hand pinky no longer bends, her skull is patched up by coins in places, her jaw remains tight, and she lives with daily pain and an addiction to a narcotic called "husk."
I know that authors generally have little say in the cover art, but it was a nice surprise that the cover art suggests some of that damage.
It actually hurt my enjoyment of the book more that it started out with such strength and potential, then squandered much of it, instead of being a disappointment all the way through.