The Devils

, #1

560 páginas

Idioma English

Publicado el 13 de mayo de 2025

ISBN:
978-1-250-88005-5
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(3 reseñas)

Brother Diaz has been summoned to the Sacred City, where he is certain a commendation and grand holy assignment awaits him. But his new flock is made up of unrepentant murderers, practitioners of ghastly magic, and outright monsters. The mission he is tasked with will require bloody measures from them all in order to achieve its righteous ends.

Elves lurk at our borders and hunger for our flesh, while greedy princes care for nothing but their own ambitions and comfort. With a hellish journey before him, it's a good thing Brother Diaz has the devils on his side.

1 edición

reseñó The Devils de Joe Abercrombie (The Devils, #1)

Bloody good fantasy, and funny with it

Having lingered in Joe Abercrombie's FIrst Law and Shattered Sea settings for many thousands of pages, I am not surprised to find that "The Devils" is another highly entertaining and vividly imagined fantasy novel. I think I like it even more than the other books by him that I've read.

The betrayal, greed, lust and megalomania in Abercrombie's books is a reflection of the villainy we see in the highest offices of our real world. In this novel the vile corruption and hypocrisy of the church is at the centre of the plot. The enemies of the church - the mutants, aliens demons, and other undesirables are considered anathema whose lives are forfeit. Yet they are the ones who are led by loyalty and love. This is not to say they are prefect heroes - far from it. But when they manage to do good and support each other, it …

More Abercrombie

A fun read. Very much more Abercrombie written in a lighter tone than some of his grittier works.

A band of antiheroes on a quest, similar to other reviews it definitely had a bit of a "DnD party on a quest" vibe - even down to their initial motivations via the pope.

Longer than it needed to be for the story, I think. It almost felt like two books in one.

I'd read another book with these characters now that I've grown to like them. I did love Vigga the scandinavian werewolf.

Very fun story with memorable characters…

The setting is the Mediterranean at the end of the Middle Ages, if Carthage had won against Rome, if the Muslims had not conquered the Maghreb and Spain, if Jesus had been a woman, and if Europe had been threatened over the centuries by many elvish invasions. Oh, and magic happens.

The characters are well defined, but perhaps too close to DnD classes: the paladin, the sorcerer (no, the magician!), the cleric, the thief, the barbarian… So the whole adventure feels a bit like a ttrpg campaign.

On the other hand, Abercrombie is a master storyteller and I’m curious about what’s happening next for the company.