Review: The Devils, by Joe Abercrombie
by
Stuart Holland
Joe Abercrombie has a talent for brutish, profane, and relatable characters and it feels like every time I read one of his books, I discover that all over again. The Devils is just fantastic. The whole cast shines on their quest from the Holy City to reach Troy. Every supporting villain and minor character along the way is a pleasure to read on the page.
From right at the beginning, when Alex is shouted at by some merchant and she screams “Fuck yourself!” at him. It’s the simple choices, the fact that she omitted the “go” at the beginning of that sentence, was a consistent way of how she spoke. You could feel each characters’ voice in the narrative of their point-of-view chapters. The way Sunny is never sure. The way everything reminds Jakob of some other event or person from the past. The way Balthazar constructs his elaborate sentences to hype himself up. The way Vigga’s mind wanders as she’s talking. The repetition built into Diaz’s life.
Abercrombie knows how to use repetition as well. He catches little callbacks that are sometimes only within the current chapter that make the reader think like the character. The number of times someone repeats “Oh God” as things go more and more wrong. The different intonations in how Diaz says “Sweet Saint Beatrice”.
The plot itself is a lot of fun, and lays a lot of interesting groundwork for future stories. I assume there will be more of these, though I’m not entirely sure.
Unlike Abercrombie’s other books, which wink and nod at existing in some far-future post-apocalypse where people have forgotten about modernity and the concept of a “world before” is just a myth, The Devils is set in a strange fantastical alternate history version of Europe. There is an England and a Troy, and a schism in the church. But one of the Popes is a ten year old girl. And the vikings aren’t just raiders, they’re also werewolves (some of them anyway).
This book is a blood carnival of a good time and I’d highly recommend it. If you like Abercrombie’s other books, you’ll like this one. If you like fantasy, you’ll like it too.
