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Authors: Joe Abercrombie

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The Great Leveller: Best Served Cold, The Heroes and Red Country

BOOK: The Great Leveller: Best Served Cold, The Heroes and Red Country
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The Great Leveller

Joe Abercrombie

 

Best Served Cold

The Heroes

Red Country

www.gollancz.co.uk

Praise for Joe Abercrombie:
 
‘Joe Abercrombie’s
Best Served Cold
is a bloody and relentless epic of vengeance and obsession in the grand tradition, a kind of splatterpunk sword ’n sorcery
Count of Monte Cristo
, Dumas by way of Moorcock. His cast features tyrants and torturers, a pair of poisoners, a serial killer, a treacherous drunk, a red-handed warrior and a blood-soaked mercenary captain. And those are the good guys . . . The battles are vivid and visceral, the action brutal, the pace headlong, and Abercrombie piles the betrayals, reversals, and plot twists one atop another to keep us guessing how it will all come out. This is his best book yet’
George RR Martin
 
‘A satisfyingly brutal fantasy quest. Best served cold? Modern fantasy doesn’t get much hotter than this’
SFX
 
‘Joe Abercrombie is probably the brightest star among the new generation of British fantasy writers . . . Abercrombie never underestimates the horrors that people are prepared to inflict on one another, or their longlasting, often unexpected, consequences. Abercrombie writes a vivid, well-paced tale that never loosens its grip. His action scenes are cinematic in the best sense, and the characters are all distinct and interesting’
The Times
 
‘Spiked with cynicism, and indeed spikes,
Best Served Cold
has as much in common with a classic Hollywood caper as it does with the rest of the genre. Moral ambiguity, hard violence, and that weaving of laughter, horror and pathos make it breathe, though the brilliant characters are what really make this soar. This is the highest grade of adult, commercial fantasy we have seen for quite a while’
Deathray
 
‘Abercrombie is both fiendishly inventive and solidly convincing, especially when sprinkling his appallingly vivid combat scenes with humour so dark that it’s almost ultraviolet’
Publishers’ Weekly
 
‘Storms along at a breakneck pace. Each character has a history of betrayal and a wobbly moral compass, giving further realism and depth to Abercrombie’s world. The violence is plentiful, the methods of exacting revenge are eye-wateringly inventive and the characters well fleshed out. A fan of Bernard Cornwell’s historical escapades could easily fall for it. Believe the hype’
Waterstone’s Book Quarterly
 
‘All in all, we can’t say enough good things about Mr Abercrombie’s latest addition to the genre. It’s intelligent, measure, thoughtful, well paced and considered, but retains a sense of fun that has flavoured the rest of his excellent biography. We can’t recommend it enough’
Sci Fi Now
 
‘This is deep, dark stuff but it’s a mark of that nice Mr Abercrombie’s talent that he can wrap such complex themes in the kind of rip-roaring adventure that is so utterly compelling that, from the first page, it is impossible to put down’
Sci-Fi London
 
‘Abercrombie weaves a dense plot, but not at the expense of the pace, and casts an ensemble of gritty, odd but always interesting characters to undertake Murcatto’s revenge. Fans of Abercrombie’s work will not be disappointed by his latest offering, which features all his usual hallmarks: cold steel, black comedy, fully realised characters and internecine struggles, both personal and epic’
Dreamwatch
 
‘Abercrombie writes dark, adult fantasy, by which I mean there’s a lot of stabbing in it, and after people stab each other they sometimes have sex with each other. His tone is morbid and funny and hardboiled, not wholly dissimilar to that of Iain Banks . . . Like Fritz Leiber you can see in your head where the blades are going, what is clanging off what, the sweat, the blood, the banter. And like George R. R. Martin Abercrombie has the will and the cruelty to actually kill and maim his characters’
Time Magazine
 

Title Page

Praise

Best Served Cold

Cover

Dedication

Title Page

Benna Murcatto Saves a Life

I – TALINS

Land of Opportunity

The Bone-Thief

Fish out of Water

Six and One

Bloody Instructions

II – WESTPORT

Poison

Science and Magic

The Safest Place in the World

Evil Friends

Two Twos

Plans and Accidents

Repaid in Full

III – SIPANI

Fogs and Whispers

The Arts of Persuasion

The Life of the Drinker

Left Out

A Few Bad Men

The Peacemakers

Cooking up Trouble

Sex and Death

That’s Entertainment

What Happened

IV – VISSERINE

Vengeance, Then

Downwards

Rats in a Sack

The Forlorn Hope

Mercy and Cowardice

The Odd Couple

Darkness

The Connoisseur

Vile Jelly

Other People’s Scores

The Fencing Master

V – PURANTI

Sixes

The Eye-Maker

Prince of Prudence

Neither Rich nor Poor

Heroic Efforts, New Beginnings

The Traitor

King of Poisons

No Worse

Harvest Time

The Old New Captain General

VI – OSPRIA

His Plan of Attack

Politics

No More Delays

All Business

The Fate of Styria

To the Victors . . .

So Much for Nothing

Shifting Sands

VII – TALINS

Return of the Native

The Lion’s Skin

Preparation

Rules of War

One Nation

All Dust

The Inevitable

Thus the Whirligig . . .

Seeds

All Change

Happy Endings

Acknowledgements

The Heroes

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Order of Battle

BEFORE THE BATTLE

The Times

The Peacemaker

The Best of Us

Black Dow

What War?

Old Hands

New Hands

Reachey

The Right Thing

DAY ONE

Silence

Ambition

Give and Take

The Very Model

Scale

Ours Not to Reason Why

Cry Havoc and …

Devoutly to be Wished

Casualties

The Better Part of Valour

Paths of Glory

The Day’s Work

The Defeated

Fair Treatment

Tactics

Rest and Recreation

DAY TWO

Dawn

Opening Remarks

The Infernal Contraptions

Reasoned Debate

Chains of Command

Closing Arguments

Straight Edge

Escape

The Bridge

Strange Bedfellows

Hearts and Minds

Good Deeds

One Day More

Bones

The King’s Last Hero

My Land

DAY THREE

The Standard Issue

Shadows

Under the Wing

Names

Still Yesterday

For What We Are About to Receive …

The Riddle of the Ground

Onwards and Upwards

More Tricks

The Tyranny of Distance

Blood

Pointed Metal

Peace in Our Time

The Moment of Truth

Spoils

Desperate Measures

Stuff Happens

AFTER THE BATTLE

End of the Road

By the Sword

The Currents of History

Terms

Family

New Hands

Old Hands

Everyone Serves

Just Deserts

Black Calder

Retired

Acknowledgements

Red Country

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

I: T
ROUBLE

Some Kind of Coward

The Easy Way

Just Men

The Best Man

All Got a Past

The Stolen

II: F
ELLOWSHIP

Conscience and the Cock-Rot

New Lives

The Rugged Outdoorsman

Driftwood

Reasons

Oh God, the Dust

Sweet’s Crossing

Dreams

The Wrath of God

The Practical Thinkers

The Fair Price

III: C
REASE

Hell on the Cheap

Plots

Words and Graces

That Simple

Yesterday’s News

Blood Coming

The Sleeping Partner

Fun

High Stakes

Old Friends

Nowhere to Go

IV: D
RAGONS

In Threes

Among the Barbarians

Bait

Savages

The Dragon’s Den

Greed

V: T
ROUBLE

The Tally

Going Back

Answered Prayers

Sharp Ends

Nowhere Fast

Times Change

The Cost

Last Words

Some Kind of Coward

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Copyright Page

BOOK: The Great Leveller: Best Served Cold, The Heroes and Red Country
13.34Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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