When I was a kid, most of my holidays were spent looking at various Sites of Historical Importance. Britain has no shortage of these. Many of them are former castles, ruins of previous ages reduced to – in Eddie Izzard’s words – a series of small walls. Sometimes, they weren’t even that. Some of them were significant because, for one reason or another, they played some part in a battle. The Heroes is a book about that kind of site.

Having explored vengeance in Styria in Best Served Cold, Joe Abercrombie has returned to the North for this book. It’s pretty obvious that he, like a lot of his readers, has a soft spot for the Named Men of the North. The book deals with the fight over a particular area of land, a hill with a ring of stones called The Heroes, because it has military significance in a larger war with smaller motivations.

One thing is clear: Joe Abercrombie knows his subject. He knew his subject when he tackled fantasy tropes and clichés in The First Law trilogy. He deftly played with reader’s expectations through characterisation and plot, producing an absolute classic that had the benefit of also being beautifully written. In Best Served Cold I got the impression he was moving more and more to another pet subject: military history. The twists and turns of vengeance, plotting and Nicomo Cosca kept the actual fighting to a minimum. It seems The Heroes is there to move us more assuredly into the world of total war.

I have a sense that although these last two books are technically stand alone works, Abercrombie might be working toward some grand, overarching plot the like of which we can currently only guess at. The unseen players, The Cripple (Glokta), Bayaz, and Gurkhul, are clearly the chess Grandmasters, while we spend all our time following the lives of the pawns.

What marks Abercrombie out as a great writer is a combination of three things: a clarity of phrase and the ability to reflect, word by word, the thought patterns of his characters; clear knowledge and refusal to bathe in false glory and myth when it comes to that subject (he likes his grit); the constant twists and turns and subtleties of his plotting.

His writing has great immediacy to it, and gives a strong feeling of the turns of chance and planning, rather than the sensation that it’s all destiny and fate and all he has to do is take us there. The characters interact with grim humour, coming to life off the page because of Abercrombie’s talent for recreating the rhythms of their inner world. He doesn’t tend to rely on “so-and-so felt this, and worried about that”, as though peering at their inner selves from outside. He picks up a sense of accent that is much more subtle than you normally see in fantasy.

As far as plotting goes, there is a Chekhov’s gun strewn on every page. Some of them are very subtle, others more obvious. He never usually underlines the presence of something we should take note of for later, trusting readers not to need this. When the hidden plot finally flowers and reveals itself, we don’t need to be reminded of these things from earlier, and they aren’t inserted so late they look obviously as though they were only thought up at the last minute.

When it comes to battle, Abercrombie clearly knows his stuff. He knows, in The Heroes, the importance of geography in war. He understands, from the way he writes, that he gets the messiness of each battle, the difficulties unique to each side in promotion, leadership, control and tactics. He is also keenly aware that while it might look like chess, much of the activity on the battlefield is dictated by smaller parties, by chance, by sudden outbreaks of heroism and cowardice, and that the outcome is never entirely certain.

Poking through other reviews on Goodreads, I could see why many people gave this only three stars and felt disappointed. Joe Abercrombie uses an awful lot of characters, many of whom appear momentarily. Huge swathes of the book are battle scenes. Maces, swords and axes hacking off limbs and staving in skulls. There is far less of the subtlety of his earlier works, and I have to admit, it can be hard work reading through those sequences.

He has managed to balance the grand battle with the personal, however, and I have to admit, I was quite emotional at certain deaths, laughed out loud at the banter of the Northmen, and caved to four stars rather than three in the end because I simply could not stop reading it.

Abercrombie handles his material well. While it isn’t the same as The First Law, he has moved in new directions. The Heroes is Abercrombie’s take on another staple of fantasy tropes: the epic battle. This time, he has chosen to drill down into the detail of what makes individual battles work, and what doesn’t, the balance of ambition, stupidity and competition amongst allies, and the swiftly changing nature of political allegiances.

This won’t be for everybody. If you are looking for more traditional fantasy, with at least a shred of magic or glamour, you won’t find it here. However, of particular interest is the rise of Red Beck, the fall of Black Dow, Finree’s character arc (especially well handled, I thought), and the legendary Corporal Tunny. Abercrombie has – yes, I’m gonna say it – a Shakespearian gift for the comic sideshow, and he more than delivers. This is definitely a book for people who like their wars cold, brutal, and where the humour is always on a knife edge.

Right. How shall I start? I gave this two stars on Goodreads, and having seen authors complain about low-starred reviews, I think it probably warrants an explanation. I picked up this book, and its sequel, because such a fuss was made about the release of the final part of the trilogy.

Notice: This review contains spoilers.

The premise is interesting. Demons rise every night to attack your standard dark to early middle-ages style world because reasons. It’s standard fantasy fare, including the traditional farm boy becomes avenging hero, with disappointing father and death of mother.

For the first 60-70 pages, the story unfolds at a fairly slow pace. I have to admit, I didn’t feel scared of the demons. The people have wards to keep them off homes and farmsteads, and the demons don’t have the intelligence to do anything about it. Getting from place to place is difficult, but nobody seems to have come up with the idea of warded inns or at least making it easier to get things from place to place (since the few major cities absolutely have to trade with each other in order to survive).

The writing steals much of the thunder big scenes might have. It lacks energy and pace, and the characters appear to have been taken from all the standard fantasy tropes without any real effort to spruce them into something with depth. We continually have to be told how they’re feeling, rather than being able to work it out, which gets tiresome. I felt like what I was reading of Arlen’s life was essentially back story. I was waiting for the story to begin proper, and it never seemed to get started.

Just as I was getting excited because Arlen was out on his own, away from home, protecting himself from demons by himself, the author switches to his main female protagonist, Leesha. And this is where the book really suffers. None of the women in the story seem to be remotely interested in anything other than genitalia and the various things that can be done with them. Well, two things: sex and babies. The explanation is that “every baby born is a win against the demons”, or words to that effect, which made me uncomfortable (it’s very similar to slogans certain types of fascists like to use).

Leesha’s entire personality and its development comes down to what she is or isn’t doing with what’s between her legs. I’m starting to think that Lindsay Ellis’s suggestion that writers get one shot to use the “she was raped!” character development idea in their entire career might not be a bad idea. Some variation of it is used for every stage of Leesha’s life. I swear, even in the darkest of ages, women had more going on than this. Even the apparent power of women in the nearest city is entirely based on their ability to have children, so I don’t really see this as a saving point for the tedious and flat sexual politics.

What annoyed me most was that while Leesha brushes off nightly sexual assaults on her journey to this city to finish her apprenticeship as Herb Gatherer (the one opportunity women have to do something slightly different, although it still largely boils down to messing with other women’s bits), when she is raped by bandits later in the story, it’s the end of the world. Please, male writers, talk to actual women about what it might be like trapped with demons on one side and a rapist on the other and having to tolerate that every night. I promise you, they won’t be greeting their rapist with a hug and smiles when they meet him later.

About halfway into the story, we are introduced to a third protagonist. Now, I have no issue with multiple protagonists. It’s just that the space between them is too large, and I was struggling to care much about the first two. We don’t know much about Rojer’s life, but it is dealt with in a more perfunctory way that might have moved the story on a bit for the other two. Still, all this time feels like back story.

It should be obvious to absolutely everybody that the fabled Deliverer turns out to be Arlen, and that this is how he ends up being “The Warded Man”. I’d been wondering, all through the story, why people didn’t tattoo themselves with wards. It’s only explained at the last minute that people do get tattoos, but not of wards. I thought the explanation for why weapons aren’t warded was flimsy. It’s another case of making it so that everybody has to sit around waiting for destiny to point its finger at certain people.

The story only really starts when Arlen appears as The Warded Man. Turns out all sorts of stuff has happened in the meantime, and now he’s all tattooed and has demon abilities. Only now are we told about many of the ancient stories about the Warded Man, which is a bit like a writer, having not pointed out Chekhov’s gun at the beginning, now informs the audience that it was right there and now it’s being fired. This happens a lot, throughout the story. You can do that, but it feels tiresome and as though it was added at the last minute.

In other places, things that we never knew were part of the world are introduced in order to make plot points happen. Bandits attack Rojer and Leesha, on their way to save Cutter’s Hollow (stereotypical Olde Worlde Village). Bandits? Arlen never had to think about bandits when he was on the run from his own village – demons were enough of a worry. I couldn’t help wondering how bandits could possibly survive for any length of time in a world that’s essentially violently fatal to humans for as long as it’s dark every single day. They stole the wards, but what did they do before that? Where were they? And why weren’t they a problem before?

Up until this point, I was veering between giving the book two or three stars. What happened next made it very hard for me to resist giving it one star. The Warded Man appears to save Leesha and Rojer from the rather more pressing threat of demons, in true Slightly Grumpy Fantasy Hero fashion. Fair enough. Then he mentions his horse.

His horse called Twilight Dancer.

That is what instantly arrived in my head. I laughed out loud. Admittedly, it’s not actually Twilight Sparkle, but I am pretty sure in the old days of My Little Pony there was probably a Twilight Dancer. It’s far, far too close to MLP for me to take even slightly seriously.

Here’s the thing. We all know from Terry Pratchett that Death’s horse is called Binky. In Terry Pratchett’s world, this is fine. Terry Pratchett writes humorous fantasy, stuff that doesn’t take itself as seriously as this is trying to do. Every single time Twilight Dancer got mentioned – especially the fact that he was a huge stallion – I laughed. I’m sorry, I couldn’t help it. It was 50 Shades and Salad Fingers all over again.

It made it impossible to take the climax and conclusion of the book even slightly serious. Twilight Dancer is mentioned on almost every page. What with Leesha’s character falling apart as the inconsistencies became too much for it to bear, The Warded Man having taken on yet another rather overdone fantasy cliché, and the long spell in the desert with the Very Obviously Muslim Arabs, I was lost.

It’s a shame. There are some really interesting ideas in here. The magic system, when it was finally explained, is intriguing and I wanted to see more of that. The idea of tattooing yourself with wards and fighting demons is an awesome one. Yet it felt as though this was 400 pages of back story and 50 of actual story. I didn’t need to know, in that much detail, how Arlen came to be who he is by the end of the book, especially as it feels like excessive time was spent on some bits, and vital scenes took place off-camera. Most interesting of all is Rojer’s violin playing and its impact on demons. Yet this is brushed over as just a sideline to the central story of the Very Obvious Hero Who Does Traditional Fighting.

Part of the problem is that when you have more writers poking fun at, or deliberately mocking, traditional tropes, you have to be damned good before you start using them seriously. It was hard work reading to the end, just because I’d entirely lost the ability to take any of it seriously. Twilight Dancer, poor sod, is probably partly to blame for that. It’s not good if you read a book constantly wondering how other authors would have handled scenes – or the entire plot – in a better way. So if you do want to write traditional serious fantasy, do it very well, be careful that your tropes don’t descend into clichés, and don’t name your horses after My Little Ponies.

Anybody who read me gush over Abercrombie’s The First Law Trilogy knows I’m biased about his writing. I have to admit, it took me a long time to get to his follow-up standalone books, precisely because his first trilogy was so damned good.

Not to mention, I’m That Kind of fan. The kind of fan that wants to read about the same characters over and over, even if they’re all dead and gone back to the mud. I get emotional still over hearing the names Rudd Threetrees, Harding Grim, Black Dow, the Dogman and of course, Logan Nine-Fingers.

They appear in Best Served Cold only as memories, of course. Time has moved on, and the focus of the story has shifted from Adua and the North to Styria and its surrounding lands. It is a much more focused story. Where The First Law was a sprawling epic fantasy – well, stuck its tongue out at the grandeur of the sprawling epic fantasy – Best Served Cold really is much more about one woman, and her quest for vengeance.

I don’t often like to wade into issues of gender politics, but I loved that Abercrombie put a brutal, twisted, and morally conflicted woman at the heart of his story. Not only that, but he’s avoided the tendency of authors, when they pick a female lead, to spend the entire time going over and over the rigid sexual politics that must, of course, lie at the heart of their struggle.

Abercrombie doesn’t ignore the fact it’s unusual for a woman to be the captain general of an army, and a mercenary one at that, he doesn’t make it the central issue. This isn’t about a woman who has bravely broken through stereotypes and the inevitable cost to her personal life and relationships, yada yada yada. No, Monzcarro Murcatto is far more complex than that. Scarred and battered by Orso’s attempt to murder her, she still gets plenty of nookie, battle and respect. Often all at once.

All Abercrombie’s characters are so richly painted. This is a book about characters, and about war. I don’t think he’s making big, sweeping statements about the nature of war and how much it damages people, because Abercrombie is too subtle for that. As usual his book is as twisted as his central protagonist. He is a fan of the battered anti-hero, and by battered, I mean really battered. Monza is as contorted a character, physically and mentally, as Glokta was. And here he is again, never named, but now overshadowing the whole story.

This book in particular is a relief for all those tired of the image of war as somehow grand and noble. None of Abercrombie’s characters are great or noble in any sense that fantasy understands. There are no heroes here, and none of the obvious tear-jerking moments that you might get in Tolkien or other giants of the genre. To some extent, Abercrombie is poking fun, but he’s obviously keenly aware that the glittering stories of the great epics hide a rather more complex, gritty and often comic truth.

On the other hand, Abercrombie’s grim view of the world can wear thin. I think this was why I found Brandon Sanderson’s Elantris such a relief. After reading much of George RR Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire, and then a lot of Abercrombie’s books, where any attempt to be genuinely ‘good’ is either masked by cruel and biting wit (Tyrion) or just out and out failure (Caul Shivers and Logan Nine-Fingers), it was a relief to read about people whose good intentions paid off, who could be altruistic without being annoying. And who won out in the end without being too tarnished or twisted by the effort.

Fantasy seems to swing between the need to portray heroes doing great deeds and generally saving the world in battle and cutting the myth of the great battle and heroic deeds apart. I tend to have to swing between one and the other, because as much as Abercrombie might be right about people, one does need a little light in the darkness, occasionally.

Still, I continue to love Abercrombie’s books. I feel a little sting in the corners of the eyes at the mention of certain names (I’ve always loved the Named Men of the North), and the unfolding saga of the Circle of the World continues to prove enjoyable, interesting, and incredibly twisted.