In December of last year I read Joe Abercrombie’s newest book, A Little Hatred. I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was enthralling to return to Adua and meet up with with characters such as Jezal, Glokta, Ardee and their children, as well as heading to the North where conflict has never truly settled and it is up to the sons and daughter of Caulder, the Dogman and Finree dan Brock to settle the scores.

Joe Abercrombie is probably the only author where I can say I have enjoyed every single one of the books and short stories he has written. The world is so grounded and the characters are each so unique and play off each other beautifully! I also have to give kudos to Steven Pacey who is a fantastic orator and just adds to the individual character voices in the audio-books. However I have to admit that, at first, these books were not my cup of tea. It was my first introduction to Grimdark fantasy, and after reading mostly high fantasy previously, I was unprepared for the grittiness of them. Not many people bleed out while describing how it felt before cutting to the perspective of the person who killed them (who you then know will also die in an equally painful way because they are a PoV who is not a main character) in Brandon Sanderson novels for example.

However I persevered, and as I became familiar with his style of writing I began to enjoy it more and I eventually read all of his books except the for the graphic novels. After reading A Little Hatred I even went back and from January this year reread the First Law Trilogy, Best Served Cold, The Heroes and Sharp Ends again. They were more enjoyable than the first time I had read them and I was able to make many more connections the second time too. There are so many little interactions and things that you can pick up on when you know what to look for, such as Bremer dan Gorst asking a prostitute in Cardotti’s House of Leisure if he could call her Finree in one of the short stories set during Best Served Cold.

An interesting thing about Abercrombie’s books is that I have always enjoyed the second book out of the three he has released. I really enjoyed the journeying around the North with West in Before They Are Hanged, the dozen who we followed in The Heroes was quite a tragic group and they gave interesting counter-perspectives to those of Black Dow, Calder and the Union’s PoV characters and Thorn is just such as badass in Half the World!

Now the worst part about reading A Little Hatred is that I will have to wait until September to read the second book in his trilogy, and then likely one more year after that to read the final book. But that is also a great boon about being an Abercrombie reader, he is a well paced author and you know that his books will be released in a timely manner (unlike some others out there who haven’t released the third book despite claiming it had already been written back in the early 2010’s). I am eagerly anticipating the The Trouble With Peace, and my partner and I have some theories about what could happen. He is hoping that Monza’s son will be a PoV character and that Leo dan Brock and Stour Nightfall will be sent over to try to reclaim Styria from him while I want the civil unrest amongst the workers’ unions to build up to a point where Bayaz, First of the Magi, is finally overthrown. Anything could happen and I look forward to Steven Pacey’s amazing voice bringing those characters to life once more.