Posts Tagged: Joe Abercrombie

A Map for Red Country by Joe Abercrombie

A Map for Red Country by Joe Abercrombie, art by Dave Senior and Laura Brett – Click to Embiggen

Abercrombie on the map:

The Heroes was very focused in time and place, detailed, forensic almost, the ground all important – faux military history, in a sense, so the map needed to look detailed, professional and precise as well, with the positions of units added in for an extra veneer of military exactitude. This time around the story is taking place in an expanse of largely unmapped, scarcely settled wilderness so it made sense that the map be much rougher, less accurate-seeming, more woolly and suggestive without too much worry over blank spaces, a drawn on the back of a beermat by a fella with a big beard sense.

We all like a good map, don’t we? I do appreciate, too, that there is a slight red cast to the colour palette used for the map, making this, literally, a red country.

Cover Art for Red Country by Joe Abercrombie (UK)

Map by Dave Senior and Daggers by Didier Graffetaption

Yep, that’s an Abercrombie cover. Yep, still awesome. There’s also a full spread and a finalized synopsis:

Red Country by Joe Abercrombie

They burned her home.

They stole her brother and sister.

But vengeance is following.

Shy South hoped to bury her bloody past and ride away smiling, but she’ll have to sharpen up some bad old ways to get her family back, and she’s not a woman to flinch from what needs doing. She sets off in pursuit with only a pair of oxen and her cowardly old stepfather Lamb for company. But it turns out Lamb’s buried a bloody past of his own, and out in the lawless Far Country, the past never stays buried.

Their journey will take them across the barren plains to a frontier town gripped by gold fever, through feud, duel and massacre, high into the unmapped mountains to a reckoning with the Ghosts. Even worse, it will force them into alliance with Nicomo Cosca, infamous soldier of fortune, and his feckless lawyer Temple, two men no one should ever have to trust…

I’d’ve liked to have seen a different palette, since this one treds so closely to what we saw with Best Served Cold and The Heroes, but that’s really my only complaint. Great stuff, better than the US cover. A few weeks ago, I gathered together everything we know about Red Country, check it out, if you’re interested.

RED COUNTRY by Joe Abercrombie

I like this new direction for the US editions of Abercrombie’s novels, even if I still prefer the UK covers. They’re well executed and take a familiar concept (dude with a sword), but inject some life into it. This will sit well along the trade paperback releases of Best Served Cold and The Heroes. So, good on Lauren Panepinto, art director at Orbit Books, for saving the series’ cover from their previous lows. I was hoping for something that would reflect the Western influence on the novel, like a pistol (do they exist yet in Abercrombie’s world?) or a dude with a mean handlebar moustache and a wide-brimmed hat, but, well, c’est la vie.

Panepinto’s brief thoughts on the cover:

I’m super excited to be able to continue our new US cover style from the trade paperbacks of The Heroes and Best Served Cold into the hardcover of Red Country. These have been the most epic photo shoots I’ve ever participated in, and Michael Frost and Gene Mollica have done an excellent job casting, styling, and producing fantastic images. The model for this shoot was particularly into the shoot, having been Pierce Brosnan’s Bond stunt double! Extra credit.

Last week, I gathered together everything we know about (A) Red Country into one handy post, so head there for a synopsis and some juicy analysis. And, if you’re into book trailers (for some reason…), you can find a short teaser for (A) Red Country at Fantasy Faction.

Beware, there are spoilers here for The First Law trilogy, specifically the ending of A Last Argument of Kings.

A Red Country is the next novel set in Joe Abercrombie’s popular fantasy world that readers first discovered in The First Law trilogy. With Abercrombie recently finishing a first draft of the novel, and some interesting news about the plot, I thought it would be a good time to go over the details of what we know about A Red Country.

First, we have this early synopsis from Abercrombie’s blog, from February 2012:

Shy South comes home to her farm to find a blackened shell, her brother and sister stolen, and knows she’ll have to go back to bad old ways if she’s ever to see them again. She sets off in pursuit with only her cowardly old step-father Lamb for company. But it turns out he’s hiding a bloody past of his own. None bloodier. Their journey will take them across the lawless plains, to a frontier town gripped by gold fever, through feuds, duels, and massacres, high into unmapped mountains to a reckoning with ancient enemies, and force them into alliance with Nicomo Cosca, infamous soldier of fortune, a man no one should ever have to trust…

While the confirmed conclusion of Nicomo Cosca was pleasing (he’s one of Joe’s more convincing creations, if you ask me), the real discussion was centred around the few sentences describing Shy’s namless uncle: “She sets off in pursuit with only her cowardly old step-father Lamb for company. But it turns out he’s hiding a bloody past of his own. None bloodier.”
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An epic game of D&D with Peter V. Brett, Brent Weeks and Joe Abercrombie (Photo court. Peter V. Brett's Facebook Page)

Remember this post? It was incredibly popular. Well now, thanks to Justin Landon at Staffer’s Book Review, you can watch a snippet of the now legendary D&D game featuring the likes of Jim C. Hines, Saladin Ahmed, Joe Abercrombie, Patrick Rothfuss and several other great authors. The full video is rumoured to exist and will, at some point, hit the ‘net.