A dive in into the Machiavellian and the banality of revenge. While hardly mindblowing in either plot or ideas, Best Served Cold sticks the landing in ways that surprise you. Most of fantasy has characters that struggle to commit to what is noble and virtuous, here however the focus is on characters who, more often than not, fail to deliver on their egoistical goals. And here the “more often than not” is interesting because their exceptions are marked by bleak reminders of the kind of people they really are and cannot escape.

This is of course very similar to what was seen in The First Law, but I treated that trilogy more harshly for what I thought was an excessive amount of “filler” (if you can call it that) and a very strange ending (especially for Glokta). The same didn’t happen to me this time around, however. I was pleasantly surprised by the ending and the characters remained strong and the pacing adequate until the finish line. So yeah, Abercrombie proved me right when I said he was talented but in need of a more controlled environment to make his popcorn fantasy stuff work.

And yeah, I’m officially on board the Abercrombie train now, this was pretty damn good.