Archive for Best served cold
rosumarinu Sant’ Armettu
Posted in Mountains, Travel, Wines with tags Best served cold, Corsica, Corsican wines, Denfert-Rochereau, French wines, maquis, mare e monti, Paris, Propriano, red wine, rosemary, rosumarinu, Sartène, sciaccarellu on October 20, 2025 by xi'an
The Heroes
Posted in Books with tags Best served cold, book review, First Law trilogy, Joe Abercrombie, menhir, pastiche, The Heroes on May 21, 2011 by xi'an
This is the title of the last book by Joe Abercrombie. As the four previous books, it takes place in the same universe and with mostly the same characters. Then, why bother (reading it or reviewing it)?! First, the style and humor are also the same as before, which means The Heroes is rather well written, with witty dialogues. (Here is a sample.) Moreover, while the First Law trilogy had a great collection of anti-heroes, this book sets the bar higher, with no single redeemable character! The setting is much closer to classical tragedy (in the theatrical meaning of the term) than the previous books, with a unity of time (3 days), place (The Heroes) and action (a battle). While there are many characters, most of whom were involved in the earlier books (which means it reads better as a sequel to the other books), three stand above the others, with personal viewpoints.
The backcover concludes with 
an prophetic “No heroes” and the only heroes found in the novel are standing stones (or menhirs or cromlechs) set on top of a hill central to the battle. There is much cynicism in this allegory: only frozen stones can be heroes in such an hopeless world where courage, honour, valiance have no meaning left! The premises of The Heroes are thus quite exciting and unusual, even though I understand some readers have read more than enough of those witty dialogues and gritty descriptions, as shown by this hilarious pastiche on amazon.
