by Joe Abercrombie (2011)
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You crest the hill beside Curnden Craw, those massive standing stones—the Heroes themselves—jutting from the damp earth like accusing fingers, the valley below shrouded in mist thick enough to choke a man. Your heart hammers as the first horns wail, Union banners twitching in the wind, thousands of Northmen stirring like a kicked anthill. This is The Heroes, Joe Abercrombie’s brutal hymn to three days of unrelenting war, and from that first page, you’re knee-deep in the mud, tasting blood on the wind.
Craw, the grizzled named man with a code that’s cracking under the weight of loyalty, hunkers with his Carls—Jolly Yon Cumber cracking wise, Wonderful eyeing the horizon like death’s own scout. Across the lines, Black Dow grins from his throne of skulls, a feral king scheming through the carnage, while his bastard brother Prince Calder whispers poison to anyone who’ll listen. On the Union side, Corporal Tunny scavenges what glory he can from the latrines, and Colonel Laban Vallimir charges uphill with dreams of promotion curdling into screams. Abercrombie flips between them like a butcher’s cleaver, each chapter a fresh cut into cowardice, fury, and fleeting triumphs.
Reading it hits like a mace to the gut—the rush of Whirrun of Blud’s impossible sword dance atop the Old Bridge, his blade singing through armor and bone in a whirlwind of spray and shrieks. You feel the dread seep in during the endless second day, rain turning the hill to slurry, men slipping into slaughter as betrayal festers: Calder’s oily plots, Dow’s roaring defiance, Craw’s quiet unraveling. It’s visceral, hilarious in its horror—Tunny dodging arrows while griping about sore feet—and utterly crushing, every “heroic” charge dissolving into farce, limbs hacked, faces pulped, no songs for the fallen.
What sets The Heroes apart in grimdark’s blood-soaked field? It shrinks the epic to one godforsaken hill, dissecting war’s meat grinder from every angle—grunts, carls, chiefs, spies—without a shred of romance. No Aragorn rides in; just flawed bastards breaking, Abercrombie’s razor wit carving truth from the gore. You sense its shadow in later battle epics, the way it humanizes the meat in the grinder.
This is the book for readers who devoured A Song of Ice and Fire’s Red Wedding betrayal but craved the intimate savagery of every swing and scream, or Malazan’s sprawl boiled down to pure, pounding rhythm.
Grab The Heroes tonight—those stones are waiting, and the horns are blowing.
Author portrait: Photo: Arild Vågen | License: CC BY-SA 3.0
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