The Heroes

Description

They say Black Dow's killed more men than winter and clawed his way to the throne of the North up a hill of skulls. The King of the Union, ever a jealous neighbour, is not about to stand smiling by while he claws his way any higher. The orders have been given and the armies are toiling through the northern mud. Thousands of men are converging on a forgotten ring of stones, on a worthless hill, in an unimportant valley, and they've brought a lot of sharpened metal with them. Over three bloody days of battle, the fate of the North will be decided. But with both sides riddled by intrigues, follies, feuds and petty jealousies, it is unlikely to be the noblest hearts, or even the strongest arms that prevail.

Joe Abercrombie is a freelance film editor living in Bath with his wife and daughters.

Highly recommended - a funny, finely-wrought, terrifically energetic work of high fantasy. Seek it out -- Joe Hill The Heroes is an indictment of war and the duplicity that corrupts men striving for total power: bloody and violent, but never gratuitously so, it's imbued with cutting humour, acute characterisation and worldweary wisdom about the weaknesses of the human race. Brilliant * Guardian * [The Heroes is a] blood-drenched, thought-provoking dissection ofa three-day battle is set in the same world as Abercrombie's First Law Trilogy but stands very well alone . . . Abercrombie never glosses over a moment of the madness, passion, and horror ofwar, nor the tribulations that turn ordinary people into the titular heroes * Publishers Weekly *