BOOK REVIEW | THE DEVILS | JOE ABERCROMBIE

 

ABOUT THE BOOK

Europe stares into the abyss.

Plague and famine stalk the land, monsters lurk in every shadow and greedy princes care for nothing but their own ambitions. Only one thing is certain: the elves will come again, and they will eat everyone.

Sometimes, only the darkest paths lead towards the light. Paths on which the righteous will not dare to tread . . .

And so, buried beneath the sacred splendour of the Celestial Palace, is the secret Chapel of the Holy Expediency. For its congregation of convicted monsters there are no sins that have not been committed, no lines that will not be crossed, and no mission that cannot be turned into a disastrous bloodbath.

Now the hapless Brother Diaz must somehow bind the worst of the worst to a higher cause: to put a thief on the throne of Troy, and unite the sundered church against the coming apocalypse.

When you're headed through hell, you need the devils on your side.

REVIEW

Brother Diaz is a righteous man, full to the brim of his own righteousness and he knows he is going to go far. So, when he receives a summons to the Papal Palace to receive his reward for his all his hard work, he knows his time has come at last. However, what he doesn’t expect is to be put in charge of a vampire, a necromancer, a zombie knight, a Nordic werewolf (not one of those namby pamby german ones), an invisible elf and a buccaneer who has had more jobs than hot dinners with the express orders that he is to get the new empress of the serpentine throne across Europe safely so she can stop the elves from coming back to reap horror on the European countries.

Alex is a thief who has only one thing on her mind. Getting enough money to pay her debts and avoiding those that she owes money to in case they take her teeth. Things go sideways when she finds out that she has a family. A rich family. In fact, the richest in the whole of Europe. Oh! And she’s an empress.

Mixing a diabolical fast paced plot with in your face low brow humour, Joe Abercrombie’s new book is a laugh a minute suicide squad esque tale set in an alternative Europe where the Pope is a magically endowed ten-year-old girl and the whole idea of religion is turned upside down with female bishops.

Recently, there has been a few books that take this idea of a band of undesirable misfits against unsurmountable odds, and I have to admit that I have enjoyed them all.

As usual, Abercrombie writes a character driven book that has his usual flair for dialogue with elements of horror.

I loved every one of the characters, but it was the werewolf Vega whose voice reached out the most with her comedic outlook on life.

I imagine that this one will be on many a best of list at the end of the year, and I can definitely see why, but if you don’t like bad language in your books then I would suggest steering clear of The Devils as it takes crude to a new level. Me? I loved it in all its crude glory.