Gushing about my fantasy hero,
Joe Abercrombie.
I first heard about Joe Abercrombie when I
was 24. His name popped onto my radar in a
way that I doubt is unique: I was feverishly
scouring the internet for lists of books to
read after finishing A Dance With Dragons,
because there was a gaping, grimdark-
hungry hole in my heart.
Abercrombie’s name was on most
of these lists, so I gave him a shot,
and it changed my life.
But before I get into why I enjoyed his
writing so much, I should back up a little
and give some context. Up until that point,
I actually hadn’t read a huge amount of
fantasy aside from George RR Martin’s epic.
Sure, I’d read Lord Of The Rings and The
Hobbit as a kid, but then I’d taken a hard left
turn into literary fiction during high school
and college (we English majors love our
internal and existential crises).
When I graduated – English degree in
hand, qualifications for a career zero – I
decided that I wanted to write a book. But
as a lifelong videogame enthusiast/addict
(my hour count in Ta m r iel is embarrassingly
high), I figured that instead of writing about
people who live lives of quiet desperation in
hum-drum jobs, I would write about dragons.
Knowing that my fantasy game was a
little light, I decided to read a few popular
books before trying to write my own, and my
completely realistic plan was to reinvent the
genre with a gritty tone that focused on the
dirt underneath the characters’ fingernails
and smudged upon their souls, instead of
gleaming swords and justified kings.
The first book I read to get
a sense of the genre I was
about to ‘reinvent’ was A
Game Of Thrones.
About 50 pages into it, I stopped reading and
said to myself: ‘Oh, I’m an idiot. George RR
Martin already did this.’ (I soon found out
that GRRM wasn’t alone – Glen Cook, Steven
Erikson, Richard K Morgan, and many others
were on it, too. I was very late to a party that
already had a lot of cool people schmoozing
around the buffet line).
Anyway, this is a long way of saying I had
a lot to learn about modern fantasy when
I picked up Best Served Cold. At the time,
I’d written about 20 pages of my own book,
which featured a scene with a horrifically
hungover guy who needs to kill a dragon that
day, but I wasn’t sure where to go from there.Holy shit, but Joe sparked
some inspiration.
There are a lot of awesome aspects to Best
Served Cold. The brutal opening. The rip-
roaring revenge adventure. The brothel
scene. But what punched me in my fantasy-
nerd bone the hardest was the characters.
And I think this is what I love most about
Joe’s writing:He almost never uses blank,
throwaway characters.
Everyone in his stories – even the dudes who
are going to be dead by the next paragraph- feel like real people. They have their own
clear, believable perspective on the world,
their own shortcomings, and their own little
scraps of honour and heroism buried beneath
their scarred and calloused skin. And so
much of their dialogue is witty, perfectly
sarcastic, or just perfectly... them.
After spending some time with Monza,
Shivers, and Friendly, I obviously needed
more ‘Crombie in my life. Enter, The Blade
Itself, and with it, the Bloody Nine.
Holy. Shit.
I don’t think there is a character in fantasyBOOK CLUB
Authors On AuthorsAUTHORS ON AUTHORS
I love more than Logen Ninefingers. The
Hound is a close second. What can I say?
Show me a morally questionable, foul-
mouthed anti-hero lugging a sword around,
and I will show you a book that’s tattered
and torn from dozens of re-reads.
(I should mention that the main character
of my book, The Flawless Bershad – an
exiled dragonslayer with a penchant for
booze and mayhem – holds a candle to their
murderous hearts.)
After reading the first pages of Logen’s
ill-fated separation with his favourite
cooking pot, I went on a bender of all-things-
Abercrombie, and got to meet Gloka, Bayaz
(you bastard), Ferro, Dogman, Black Dow,
Whirrun of Bligh, Wonderful, Nicomo, and
all the other brilliant people of Joe’s worlds.
Speaking of cool names, I saw in the
description of A Little Hatred that one
dude is called Stour Nightfall, and it’s just
like: ‘Thanks for continuing to lift the
badass-name-bar with every character you
introduce, Joe. You’re making the rest of us
work really hard.’
Anyway, I’ve been gushing for quite a few
paragraphs, so I’ll start winding down. To
summarise, while I enjoy the worlds and
governments and wars and intrigue that
Abercrombie has created, what I love most
are his characters. I’m all for high-fantasy-
save-the-world-rescue-the-princess-be-the-
hero stories, in fact, I love them. But I’ll
also be an extremely happy camper if you
just give me Wonderful, Craw, and Whirrun
bullshitting around a fire before the big fight.
After my binge read, I went back to writing
my own book, Blood Of An Exile. And while
there are a lot of differences between my
stuff and Joe’s, I did fill my story with as
many complicated, morally-eyebrow-raising,
and badass characters as I could, then forced
them to roam the dangerous and dragon-
infested wilds in search of adventure.
Thanks very much for letting us into your
worlds, Joe.Blood Of An Exile by Brian
Naslund is published on 8 August
by Tor.Blood Of An Exile author Brian Naslund on getting into grimdark fantasy
082 | WWW.SCIFINOW.CO.UK
“EVEN DUDES
WHO WILL BE
DEAD NEXT
PARAGRAH
FEEL LIKE REALPEOPLE”
BRIAN NASLUNDBRIAN NASLUND ON
JOE ABERCROMBIE