A review by rg9400
Best Served Cold by Joe Abercrombie

adventurous slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

First off, I'll just say that I definitely enjoyed this more than the original trilogy. With that said, I still have a lot of criticisms. I really enjoyed the structure of this story, and I feel it's at it's best in the early going, following a ragtag group of misfits as they hatch diverse schemes that all seem to go wrong in the funniest ways. As the story progresses though, these parts start to become a lot less tighter. Around part 5, I started to feel the story meander. The parts became longer and the core loop was disrupted. Now don't get me wrong, that prevents the story from becoming formulaic. But it's replaced by Abercrombie's trademark boring combat scenes that go on for waaay too long. Parts 5 through 7 all suffer from this in a way I did not feel in the first 4 parts. Beyond the constant combat, I feel like the book tries to circle around some sort of theme or message outside of the obvious, but it feels very muddled. I wouldn't mind it if it didn't constantly seem like it was trying to say something, and I get why Abercrombie does that, else the whole thing just sort of feels pointless and futile. Similarly, I feel like the character-work is really dependent on these themes, and as the story gets muddled and becomes focused on combat, the characters don't really go anywhere. I really like Cosca, and I feel like there was something interesting that could have been done with Monza and Shivers that ended up being a missed opportunity. I did not care for the poisoner and found his assistant a more compelling concept of a character. Friendly sort of was...there? Not exactly a real character. Lastly, I do think the handling of female characters is better, but only because the bar was set so low from the original trilogy. Monza is overall a fine character, though there is this really incel-y style plot beat around her as well as some unnecessary backstory surrounding her that raised my eyes. The incel plot beat was worrying to me, though I think ultimately Abercrombie isn't expecting us to feel pity for that character, but it really felt like we were supposed to sympathize with them for a bit. 

Given all the criticisms, I still continue to blaze through these books, in no short part due to strong narration in the audiobook. The first half almost feels like a videogame with how it is structured, and it feels like it has a lot of potential that the second half ends up not being able to necessarily live up to.