Book Review: ‘The Devils’ by Joe Abercrombie

‘The Devils’ was my last shot with Joe Abercrombie and I can’t tell you how surprised I am that I loved it.

I had read ‘Half a King’ and thought it was fine, then I DNFed ‘The Blade Itself’ and I was so upset about it because I wanted to fall in love with the First Law world. Alas, it wasn’t meant to be and I was worried that maybe Abercrombie’s writing just isn’t for me, but I wanted one last shot with ‘The Devils’. I am so glad I decided to give it a whirl.

Europe stares into the abyss.

Plague and famine stalk the land, monsters lurk in every shadow and greedy princes care for nothing but their own ambitions. Only one thing is certain: the elves will come again, and they will eat everyone.

Sometimes, only the darkest paths lead towards the light. Paths on which the righteous will not dare to tread . . .

And so, buried beneath the sacred splendour of the Celestial Palace, is the secret Chapel of the Holy Expediency. For its congregation of convicted monsters there are no sins that have not been committed, no lines that will not be crossed, and no mission that cannot be turned into a disastrous bloodbath.

Now the hapless Brother Diaz must somehow bind the worst of the worst to a higher cause: to put a thief on the throne of Troy, and unite the sundered church against the coming apocalypse.

When you're headed through hell, you need the devils on your side.

It’s just as dark and fun as it sounds.

Though I will complain that it’s pretty slow and a little tough to get into, but I persisted. At first my persistence was honestly because it fits one of my r/fantasy bingo prompts that I would have struggled with otherwise, but I eventually fell into it fully, even with the slowness.

For me, I think that some of the slowness was in the way that the perspective was constantly moving and changing between the Devils and Alexis through a chapter, from one scene to the next, so I really had to pay close attention to make sure that I wasn’t confused when the scene changed. It’s definitely an interesting style, but it took me a while to get used to it.

I fell in love with the characters easily. The Devils are: Brother Diaz, a priest commissioned by the Pope herself to lead the quest; Jakob, a legendary knight; Baptiste, a jack of all trades with a shady past; Balthazar, one of the top three magicians in the world; Vigga, a Viking werewolf who leaves chaos in her wake; Sunny, an elf who can turn invisible; and Baron, a very old and mysterious vampire.

An ensemble cast is one of my favourite things, especially when they’re a ragtag band thrown together and a found family element makes its way into the story. They’re all delightfully camp and I love the way that they interact with each either, sometimes for the good and sometimes for the very, very bad. I come to love them, especially Baptiste, Sunny and Vigga. They’re all such interesting characters, but these three were the richest for me and I feel like there’s still so much to them and their stories.

I’m so glad I enjoyed ‘The Devils’ and I’m excited to see how everything develops in the next book in the series. I’m especially interested to see if Alexis will still have a starring role or if we move elsewhere with the Devils.

Thank you to Gollancz and NetGalley for the review copy.

Written by Sophie