Looking For a Good Book

In Joe Abercrombie’s The Devils, we have a strange twisting of our familiar reality. In this dark fantasy,  Abercrombie gives us a Catholic Church which only has female priests and a female pope (who is barely more than a child). Her friends and protectors include vampires and werewolves.

In this world, the Crusades are being waged against Elves – a race thought to eat the flesh of people.

Brother Diaz arrives in the Holy City, intent on serving Pope Benedicta to the best of his abilities. He is thrust, unceremoniously, into a position higher than he’s really capable of serving, tasked with helping Pope Benedicta seat a long-lost child on the recently vacated Serpent Throne in Troy.

When the sorceress, Empress Eudoxia, died, her sons were fighting across the land, each vying for their own power.  Having a foothold in Troy would help the Christian movement but it’s going to be a tough haul putting this distant claim on a throne when the sons, who are accustomed to fighting, are ready to make the claim themselves (if only they can stop fighting).

Fans of Abercrombie’s work will see everything they love about his writing here, but in different doses than one might expect. I’ve read and really liked Abercrombie’s work in the past, but it’s been a decade and I’m hardly a devoted fan so perhaps this shift has been going on for some time.

We’ve got a clear goal for our story, though the path to that goal may be a bit circuitous. There’s plenty of blood-letting action, and the characters are a lot of fun. In fact, the characters are key to the enjoyment of this book.

This isn’t a goal-driven adventure fantasy, although there’s definitely a goal. This isn’t an action book, although there’s plenty of action and battles.  This isn’t even quite a character-driven story where our protagonist(s) grow through the course of the story, although Brother Diaz definitely steps up and grows into his role.

This is a buddy book. This is about the relationships between our central characters, their growth and their adventures together. Think Avengers, or Justice League, but with elves, werewolves, vampires, and a little girl Pope.

I enjoyed the characters a lot. The female Swedish vampire, Vigga, was probably my favorite.  She had a surprisingly blasé attitude but was a force to be reckoned with when the time came. Brother Diaz is also well worth following. If there’s a central character amid the chaos of characters, it is Diaz, and it works.

Pope Benedicta grew on me. The more we got to know her the more I liked her.

Unfortunately, for a 500+ page book, the strength of the character vibes wasn’t enough to keep me appropriately engaged. Moments of fun dialog, moments of exciting action, and lots and lots of plotting. Perhaps the fact that this is the first in a series explains why it’s so much set-up. But for me, it’s not setting me up to want to invest this much time with the next book.

Looking for a good book? The Devils by Joe Abercrombie has a lot going for it, especially a great group of characters, but there’s just enough slowing it down to make it a challenging read.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

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The Devils

author: Joe Abercrombie

series: The Devils #1

publisher: Tor Books

ISBN: 9781250880055

hardcover, 560 pages