Joe Abercrombie: author of The Blade Itself and Before They Are Hanged Joe Abercrombie has been rather slippery about presenting any information about his upcoming novel, Best Served Cold, a follow up to his soon-to-be-finished The First Law Trilogy. This, however, hasn’t stopped a synopsis from being posted on Amazon.co.uk.

I’m not sure how new this is, but it’s the first solid details I’ve seen about the novel, so I thought I’d pass it along! I’m currently in the middle of Last Argument of Kings, the concluding volume of his first trilogy, and I’m already dreading the end. It’s good to know he’s hard at work on his next project, which takes place in the same world as The First Law Trilogy.

Mercenaries are a wonderful thing: they fight as you tell them, whom you tell them, and when you tell them, for nothing more precious or complicated than money. And Monzcarro Mercatto, and her brother (and lover) Benna Mercatto, are the two most successful, most popular, and most wealthy mercenaries in Styria…but wealthy, popular mercenaries are not such a good thing. In fact they’re a downright dangerous thing. Which is why Grand Duke Orso of Styria arranges to have them dealt with. Permanently. With hindsight, he may come to consider this a tactical error. Through sheer good luck – which her brother doesn’t share – Monzcarro survives the long and fatal drop Orso arranged for her, and staggers away from her encounter with a ruined right hand, an opium addiction …and a plan to come back with a fortune, plently of bladed weapons, and a single-minded determination to kill the seven men in the room when her brother was murdered. Preferably in as gruesome a manner as she can …

Sounds pretty darn good! You can check out Joe’s blog HERE, find reviews of his first two novels HERE and HERE and an interview with him HERE. Also, be on the lookout for another interview with Joe in just a couple of days. He talks a lot about Last Argument of Kings, so fans of his work should definitely mark it on their calenders!

Discussion
  • Robert February 7, 2008 at 7:40 am

    Definitely looking forward to this! First though, I got to finish up “Before they are Hanged” and “Last King of Arguments” ;)

  • Larry February 7, 2008 at 11:20 am

    Styria? Oh my, now I’m going to be imagining all of this taking place in the SE part of Austria near the Slovenian border! :P Sorry, just a non sequitur there based on the blurb. I’ll get around to reading it…sometime.

  • aidan February 11, 2008 at 10:20 am

    Robert, get on those books… Now! You won’t be disappointed.

    Larry, sooner, rather than later, is generally best where Abercrombie’s work is concerned.