The Heroes Review (Rule Three)

Title: The Heroes
Author: Joe Abercrombie
Date Purchased: 11/24/2013
Price Paid: $2.11
Date Finished: 11/20/2020
Rating: 0/5 (Rule Three)

Wow.

When I set out to read through my backlog, I didn’t really expect to invoke Rule Three on the very first book. I also didn’t expect to spend most of 2020 confined to my house, and we all know how THAT turned out.

This would normally be a review where I’d give you a brief summation of the plot, some of the characters involved, and a rough idea of what worked and what didn’t. But as I was only able to make it about 15% of the way through this book, I can’t really make that happen. Instead, I’ll talk about why I’m walking away.

Prior to purchasing a book, I’ll typically check Goodreads to see if I know anyone that has read the book and look at the overall ratings. The first Joe Abercrombie book I picked up was The Blade Itself, which has a (at time of this post) 4.16 rating with over 160,000 reviews on Goodreads. I’m sure that’s why I bought The Blade Itself, and why I was also comfortable dropping a couple bucks on The Heroes.

(A quick note about reviews here: I understand that reviews and ratings are HIGHLY subjective. Just because a lot of people like something doesn’t mean I’m going to as well. Hell, I LOVED the movie Pacific Rim. I wanted to see giant robots fighting giant monsters and that’s exactly what that movie delivered. But it’s not exactly a cinematic masterpiece. I do feel that a work with a ton of good reviews will typically trend towards higher quality though.)

I wasn’t able to finish The Blade Itself. I’m fairly certain that no one else in my book club was able to finish the book either. So The Heroes just sat and sat and sat…until now. It couldn’t be THAT bad, right? Was my inability to finish the other book just a “wrong place, wrong time” thing?

In a word, no.

As soon as I was a couple chapters into The Heroes, I started remembering the things that bothered me with his style:

• the characters are all rather flat.
• the narrative shifts so quickly from character to character that the reader is unable to really get to know any of them.
• his dialog can be hard to follow – there are multiple instances of several characters talking without any indicator of who is saying what.

All of those things made me re-read passages over and over to make sure I could infer through context who was speaking, what was going on, and which characters we were currently involved. It was…tiring.

While those are some of my general complaints with his style, I am also realizing that the “standalone” book I was reading had a heavy amount of nudge-nudge moments that were referencing characters and events from his other works. Which would be awesome for the fans, but not as much for the casual reader.

Abercrombie’s writing is often described as “gritty” and “dark”, but I find it to be stilted and disjointed. I’m a fairly quick reader, and I struggled to get through both of his books that I’ve attempted. Thankfully, I’ve heard the exact same thing from others, so I know I’m not alone.

His stuff sounds like it’s amazing for the right reader, but I am not that person.

Final Thoughts: Not for me, certainly the last Abercrombie title I will attempt.