![]() Monza’s desire for personal and emotional vengeance is the primary drive and motivation for all her actions in the novel, but instead of becoming lost in the throes of her blood-lust each death that comes from her quest has a telling impact on her psyche. The truly great thing about this novel is that it follows Abercrombie’s literary philosophy beautifully by exploring the ‘typical’ revenge plot, in a fantasy setting, and then cutting into it with the precision of a surgeon’s knife. But with Abercrombie, having already grabbed the fantasy world by the scruff of the neck with the First Law Trilogy whilst shouting, “I shall subvert all of fantasy’s known clichés and tropes! All of them!”, you know before going into Best Served Cold that this isn’t just going to be a re-hash of Hamlet or The Duchess of Malfi. ![]() Ok we may have seen this kind of thing before, anyone who has ever followed the Jacobean Dramatists (Shakespeare, Marlowe, Kyd, Webster, Ford (the list goes on)) will have a full grounding in the revenge tragedy sub-genre. This novel is the account of Monzcarro Murcatto’s quest for vengeance. His response, “Well you better put that in the review!” And so I have Mr. ![]() I had it signed and told him that I would be writing this review, and that his book was amazing. I was reading Best Served Cold at the time, my Abraham Lincoln bookmark treading lightly at 100 pages prior to the finale. Around a week or two ago I had the imponderable pleasure of meeting Joe Abercrombie at Fantasy-Faction’s Grim Gathering. ![]()
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