A pleasant read

Did not expect to see another book by Joe Abercrombie so soon after The Heroes and was pleasantly surprised to stumble upon it by chance. As others have noted, Steven Pacey is a remarkable narrator and would make a mediocre story sound superb. So much the better when the story is a decent one.

There are many parallels in Red Country to the colonization of the Americas, which adds an interesting tone to the story and at least for me, makes it easier to picture the world around the main characters. Storytelling is quite good, albeit the pacing is a little slow, events less grandiose and I would have, personally, enjoyed seeing more tie-ins into the previous books. I'm now more hopeful about hearing more about the fates of many of the old characters, though. There is a long time span between The last argument of kings and Red country along with plenty of characters and events to expand upon, so maybe we shall see another book detailing that time period more closely from the perspective of characters we haven't heard of for a long time.

Only gave the story four stars, because it doesn't quite stand up to the first law trilogy. You just have to be realistic about these things. ;)

6 people found this helpful

Do not read the review of Luke from Japan

Thank god Luke I read your review after finishing the book. I can't understand why did you include such a spoiler without an alert dude. I would report you, but after voting negatively the button disappeared.
Very good book guys. If you aren't familiar with Mr. Abercrombie's books you should start with the first law trilogy, and after that continue with Best served cold, The heroes and finally Red country.

5 people found this helpful

Cormac McCarthy and Jack Schaefer Do Epic Fantasy?

Joe Abercrombie’s Red Country (2012) reads a little like Blood Meridian crossed with Shane in an epic fantasy setting. Or like a grimdark fantasy by Joe Cook and Stephen Erikson with a strong western angle. Settlers are moving west through the Far Country, the land of the Ghosts (Native American analogues), looking for gold, following dreams, bringing “civilization” with them. There are cattle herds, river crossings, stampedes, and attacks by painted and motley-clothed Indians, er, Ghosts, circling the wagons and trying to take scalps, er, ears. There is the destination, the town Crease, run by and fought over by two saloon owners, the Mayor (centered in the Church of Dice) and Papa Ring (centered in the Whitehouse). In Crease the gamblers, gangsters, drunkards, beggars, and prostitutes outnumber the prospectors, and drinking, swearing, thieving, and fighting are rife.

Although Abercrombie offers a telling comment by Mark Twain as epigraph for one of the parts of the novel, “There are many humorous things in the world, among them the white man’s notion that he is less savage than the other savages,” and although one or two of Abercrombie’s main characters feel some sympathy for the Ghosts, realizing, for instance, that they are just people and that the settlers are engaged in “a brave but foolhardy effort to export the worst evils of city living into the middle of the unspoiled wilderness,” no main point of view character is a Ghost, they come off as rather pathetic (if colorful and dangerous), and at one point their leaders are treacherously and excrescently murdered by two of the men we’re supposed to be rooting for in our reading of the novel. In short, although Abercrombie pays lip service to the concept that all men are equally savage and that civilization is in many ways a plague, he gets the reader to want non-Ghost characters to come out on top of the carnage.

Fortunately, Abercrombie is really writing epic fantasy, with mutually antagonistic cultures like the Old Empire, the Union, and the North, so he also has more formidable and villainous non-Ghost antagonists for our heroes, like Captain General Nicomo Cosca, leader of the mercenary Company of the Gracious Hand, and Inquisitor Lorsen, leader of eight or so sadistic “practicals” from the Union’s Inquisition. Cosca is a prime villain, a luminously smiling, gregarious, geriatric Captain Hook, given to philosophizing and seeking personal gain without any ethics or morals. His company indulges in rapine and pillage and massacre, burning whatever will burn, taking whatever can be carried, arriving like a plague of psychopathic locusts and leaving devastation in their wake. They are under contract to the Union to cross the border into the Near and Far Countries to find rebel remnants so Inquisitor Lorsen may torture them for a brighter future.

One of the most interesting characters is the Gracious Hand’s lawyer Temple, who’s spent most of his life taking the easy way and leaving all his many jobs and careers half-completed, a man with the moral compass to be appalled by the Company’s atrocities but without the courage to try to stop them.

But the novel is driven by Shy “My knife is always handy” South, a one-quarter Ghost, red haired, gap toothed, sharp-tongued, hard-bargaining, ex-wanted thief and murderer, and her stepfather Lamb, a hulking, taciturn, middleaged northerner who avoids conflict and can’t bargain. After their farm is burned, their hired worker hanged, and Shy’s ten-year-old sister and six-year-old brother taken, Shy and Lamb set out from the ruins to track the culprits across the Near Country and into the Far Country. Once Shy starts a task she won’t stop till it’s done, but this one seems nigh on impossible. Fortunately for her, Lamb (not his real name) turns out to be more dangerous and infamous than Shy took him to be.

Abercrombie likes to set potent characters in motion until they collide in impressive set pieces with ever higher stakes as the story progresses. Here we have the Company of the Gracious Hand (and Temple), the Fellowship (of settlers), the Inquisitors, the Ghosts, the Dragon People (a strain of Ghost hiding away on or in a sacred volcanic mountain), a small group of scoundrels led by Grega Cantliss, and our “heroes” Shy and Lamb.

Especially memorable are the terse, teasing interactions between Shy (who sticks at everything she attempts) and Temple (who sticks at nothing), Nicomo Cosca’s self-aggrandizing BS delivered to his hack biographer Spillion Sworbreck, a tour de force wagon chase scene, and a hilarious treaty signing attended by the dread Imperial Legate Sarmis.

Plenty of dry, witty, cynical dialogue:
“Some day you can build a boat from ‘meaning well’ and see how it floats. Tried that. It sank with me on it.”
“A man with a missing eye after a man with a missing finger. There’s a song somewhere in there, I reckon.”
“What can you expect when you fish men out of rivers? Heroes?”
“Severed heads never go out of fashion.”
“Here is the perennial trouble with burying your past. Others are forever trying to dig it up.”

Plenty of vivid, evocative descriptions:
“She burst out at the edge of a dizzy cliff and stared far over high and barren country, sharp black forest and bare black rock, slashed and stabbed with white snow, fading into long gray rumor, without a touch of people or color. No hint of the world she knew.”

Audiobook reader Stephen Pacey relishes the novel, giving different characters from different cultures different accents, doing fine voices for the main characters, and doing a splendid Nicomo Cosca, such that at one point when Cosca shows up unexpectedly and Abercrombie is withholding his identity for a few paragraphs, Pacey reveals the villain’s presence more quickly than were we reading the physical book. Pacey enhances the story.

Readers of Abercrombie novels will recognize here their trademark features: painterly descriptions, unpredictable and visceral violence (that may become numbing), murky moral waters, and flawed narrative point of view characters who can’t escape their troubled pasts or who have difficulty making the right choice in moments of crisis, such that we find them oddly appealing as we wonder if they’ll ever be able to find a place of peace or do the right thing.

1 person found this helpful

My favorite character

I tend not to read books more than once. I’ve read this one twice and now listened to it as well. The Bloody Nine is my favorite literary character. I have now realise that when listening to a book the characters come over according to the emphasis given to them be the narrator, so my experience has been quite different as a result, which I’m still adjusting to. So with that in mind there was only one aspect that niggled me: the narrator when saying the word “grimaced” repeatedly pronounced it as “ghri-maced” as opposed to the only way I’ve ever heard it pronounced, which is “ghri-mussed”. Otherwise I quite enjoyed the experience.

1 person found this helpful

Perfect story, character, and narration.

Abercrombie is a genius. I'm waiting to find a bad novel - this isn't it. The characters are rounded and complex, the description is rich and immersive. Steven Pacey is a great narrator - wish he could read my stuff one day.

Good but not his best

Good story telling but The Blade Itself still remains my favourite. Logan Nine Fingers is one of the best character names … Lamb not so much.

A drink, a drink, a drink

I could use a drink after that.
Gotta say they both really outdid themselves in this masterpiece! The story, character development and narration!

Not often do I bother making an actual "review" of a book, but this one was so well made all the way through!

Were on the edge the entire time!

This goes on the list of books I wish I could forget and relisten to once again!

Brilliant

Another banger by Abercrombie. And Steven Pacey is probably my favorite narrator at this point.

Incredible

I've read all books released before this one and they just keep flooring me. As good as it gets, this is.

perfection?

these books, read by this guy... my best audio book experience to date. I don't know if it's perfection... but it's the closest I've found.

usually I would do something, be driving or gardening or whatever when listening to audio books. but these ones. sometimes I will just sit, close my eyes and listen.