bookaneer 's review for:

The Devils by Joe Abercrombie

4.25

adventurous dark funny fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

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 This was one of my most anticipated books for 2025 and it did not disappoint. Well, mostly. Firstly, it is definitely bears Abercrombie's fast and furious style with lots of blood and snappy dialogue. But. There is a but. I said this in the group that I'm buddyreading it with, I found the book to be quite repetitive in the storytelling. It is divided into several parts and parts 1-3 are almost identical. It's a quest story, an adventurous tale of a band of misfits (favorite trope, yay!) bodyguarding an Empress-to-be. They found an obstacle, they worked together, then they found another obstacle and you know what comes next. The plot was too simple it became predictable, even with most of the twists in part 4. Even the dialogue came to a point when I thought, oh gosh they said that lines ten pages ago!

Anyway, I guess I was comparing with the previous trilogy (Age of Madness was brilliant with a capital B and an exclamation point). Yet, I could not deny that The Devils mostly remain entertaining, made me chuckled quite a few times (no wonder it is dubbed as GrimCom), plus I was actually losing sleep over it - which is a mark of a good book, despite my incessant whining. All in all, I cannot wait for the sequel and hopefully it would have more complicated plots and unpredictable characters.