In one particular scene of Best Served Cold, a battle leader sits upon a majestic horse, ready to lead a charge of men into battle. The same underlying tale could be told in any number of ways, with any number of stimuli in focus.

Abercrombie’s metaphors for just about everything are laden with brutality and violence he wants us to live in a harsh, cruel world, and he does than not only with dozens of scenes where people are butchered, but by describing everything from architecture to sunsets in terms of blood, guts, and excrement.Įven more than that is his use of his “camera.” Consider than in any scene of a book, there are hundreds of sensory objects an author could show us, a dizzying array of sounds, sights, smells, actions, movement. If one were to make one of those word cloud thingies from BSC, I’m certain that “blood” and “shit” would be front and center. Joe Abercrombie’s Best Served Cold gave me the same sensation, albeit with a different focus. For all its cast of entertaining characters, for me the star of the book was New Crobuzon’s overwhelming aura of dingy decay, filth, and muck. My favorite aspect of PSS was Mieville’s relentless use of language to impart an overwhelming feeling of grime. I’m going to start my review of Best Served Cold by talking very briefly about another of my favorite books, China Mieville’s Perdido Street Station.

Best served cold by joe abercrombie