After finally reviewing The Wheel of Osheim by Mark Lawrence, I’m turning to another long-overdue review: The Heroes by Joe Abercrombie. It’s another excellent installment in the world of his First Law trilogy, set about seven years after Last Argument of Kings and several years after Best Served Cold. It also brings back quite a few characters from those earlier novels.
The book chronicles three days of war between the Union and the Northern army led by Black Dow, one of Logen Ninefinger’s traitorous companions from Abercrombie’s original trilogy. As described in the book’s blurb, the two armies are “converging on a forgotten ring of stones on a worthless hill, in an unimportant valley ….” The worthless hill, with its stone monument, is called The Heroes, giving the book its title. But the title has a deeper meaning, for the novel explores what it means to be a hero amid the futility of war.
Like every Abercrombie novel I’ve read, The Heroes is a character-driven story told through a bevy of viewpoint characters on both sides of the conflict. There are few “good guys” and “bad guys,” and neither army seems particularly justified in its cause. Almost every character is painted in shades of gray, but Abercrombie makes it easy to invest in his characters, even the less admirable ones.
A few characters stand out more than others. On the Northern side, we meet Curnden Craw, a leader in Dow’s army and one of the story’s most principled characters who believes there’s a right way to do things. He wants little more than to protect his crew of warriors and end all this fighting.
Then there is Prince Calder, the youngest son of the late King Bethod, who spends much of the novel avoiding combat while scheming ways to reclaim his father’s crown. Caul Shivers, one of the main characters in Best Served Cold, is back, too, still deeply scarred by the events of that novel.
On the Union side, there is Colonel Bremer dan Gorst, a bull of a man with a high-pitched voice who thrives in the chaos of combat but is awkward and embarrassing at nearly everything else. Readers of The Blade Itself will remember him as the master swordsman who dueled Jezal dan Luthar, while readers of Best Served Cold will recognize the incident at Cardotti’s House of Leisure that cost Gorst his position in the King’s First Guard. Now reduced to serving as a royal observer, Gorst is consumed by bitterness, obsessed with the Lord Marshal’s married daughter, and disturbingly exhilarated by killing on the battlefield.
Finally, we have Finree, the daughter of the Union leader, Lord Marshal Kroy. She’s smart, ambitious, and focused on finding ways to advance her husband’s military career. But she’s also quite brave and, alongside Craw, may be the book’s closest thing to an actual hero.
One of Abercrombie’s greatest strengths is his ability to explore a story’s themes through dialogue, and The Heroes is no exception. For example, when Craw questions “What makes a man a hero?” he responds:
“Big deeds? Big name? Tall glory and tall songs? No. Standing by your crew, I reckon.”
While Bayaz, the First of the Magi and the primary proponent behind the Union’s war, voices a more cynical view:
“Heroes have their uses, but someone has to point them the right way. And clean up afterwards. They always raise a cheer from the public, but they leave a hell of a mess.”
Nearly every character’s arc touches on the question of “What makes a hero?” Each character offers a different answer, ultimately leaving the reader to decide if anyone deserves the title.
Another thing that makes The Heroes stand out is Abercrombie’s depiction of battle. The fighting is brutal, chaotic, and often pointless, with victory and defeat sometimes determined more by chance than courage or skill. In several remarkable sequences, Abercrombie shifts the viewpoint from one combatant to another, capturing the confusion and horror of war from both sides. It’s a clever technique that reinforces the novel’s central theme while making the battles feel intensely personal.
Overall, I found myself immersed in the story and the fate of each character, even the minor ones. Abercrombie is among the best at developing complex characters, which is one of the things that makes his novels so good. While I enjoyed this one a bit less than Best Served Cold and The Devils, it was a unique, grounded story that I would still rate among the best books I’ve read this year.