I’ll start by saying I’m a huge fan of The First Law Trilogy by Joe Abercrombie. I started to read Best Served Cold, a standalone novel which is part of The First Law world, with really high expectations. Sadly, my expectations were not met.
I’m not saying Best Served Cold is a poorly written book. The author does a marvelous job of setting the scenes and bringing the action. There is great detail and flair. It is interesting and it’s exciting at times but there are two glaring weaknesses.
Firstly, the premise of the story itself isn’t all that compelling.
Short summary: Monzcarro Murcatto, Monza, the Snake of Talins and the Butcher of Caprile, is an infamous warrior with a dark reputation. She and her brother Brenna are fighting to put Orso on the throne, and they are good at it, very successful. The problem is, Orso is vain and paranoid concerning their success and popularity, so when they return home one day triumphantly expecting a celebration, they are attacked and murdered by Orso’ henchmen. Unbeknownst to the henchmen, Monza miraculously survives. A mysterious figure finds her and stitches her back to health. One night, she runs away from the mysterious figure who saved her and despite being weaker and less agile than she has ever been, she begins an unhealthy quest for vengeance. She will not rest until she hunts down and kills everyone who betrayed her and her brother.
And that’s it. That’s the story. It’s a story of vengeance.
But Monza is so blinded by her quest that she doesn’t care who gets hurt in the process. She often does what seems absurd and stupid to reach her goal. Although she’s still healing from her near-death experience, she constantly considers going rogue and doing things alone.
This blind and foolish ambition makes her very unlikable. As a reader, I never liked her or cared about her quest. She has money and she hires other rogues to help her. She insults and berates those she hires. She doesn’t treat them with any respect. She doesn’t like them and they don’t like her. They are all thieves and cutthroats and no one trusts anyone. They keep betraying one another while helping her.
This is my second problem with the book.
I didn’t like any of the characters, and I don’t hate any of the characters. They are just characters in a story.
That’s not to say that these characters weren’t interesting at times or didn’t have identifiable qualities and intriguing backgrounds. They did. The author did a great job giving the reader plenty of history and details about each. But somewhere along the way, as a reader, you reach a point where you need to care about someone or something that is happening.
In The First Law Trilogy, Logen Ninefingers and Sand dan Glokta are terrible people with dark souls. They have done and continue to do a lot of damage to their world. But the reader is actually drawn to them and their stories. You start to care about what will happen at a deeper level.
This deeper level never happened for me in Best Served Cold.
I kept thinking while I was reading it that Monza could die and I would be fine with it. The author could have spun the story to follow one of the rogues she hired instead. I never thought she deserved to get revenge. It wasn’t a strong enough motivation for me to identify with her.
A few of the mercenaries Monza hires to help her on her quest have connections to The First Law Trilogy.
I wanted to root for Caul Shivers, the barbaric Northman who had ties to Logan Ninefingers and his crew, but Shivers, who came South to become a better man, almost immediately falls in with this murderous lot and is all the worse for it. Despite his physical strength and experience, he is a morally weak character that cooperates in the killing and mayhem, following Monza around like a naive puppy waiting for his next booty call. Yes, Monza and Shivers hook up but it’s physical only and has nothing to do with intimacy or love.
Shivers takes a beating over the course of the tale and becomes battered, an ugly pug with one eye missing.
Monza, still determined to get her revenge and needing more allies, can’t even look Shivers in the face anymore although his scars and injuries are her fault. She starts screwing around with the handsome Duke Rogont whom she also once betrayed.
Who hasn’t she betrayed? It’s the one thing you can bet on. If Monza knows them, she has betrayed them.
The only thing really keeping her hired band of misfits in line is the promise of a big payday when it’s over. But after the bodies start dropping and plans go sideways and many innocent people lose their lives, that promise of a big payday isn’t enough for some.
The travel from city to city with seeming ease to assassinate Monza’s enemies one by one.
Nicomo Cosca, a flamboyant alcoholic warrior Monza once betrayed, becomes her ally.
Carlot dan Eider, a character from the previous series is also involved.
Castor Morveer, a poisoner, and his assistant Day, are interesting but not intriguing.
Friendly, an uneducated murderous brute who basically grew up in prison and counts everything around him, has flashes of becoming a major player the reader might identify with, but he never really grows or changes and becomes more of a prop later on.
Shylo Vitari, a former Practical, is a nice addition from the previous series but she doesn’t have enough to do.
I think I would have liked Ishri, the East Wind, a bit more if she had joined up earlier, but her role was so restrained and diminished. She wasn’t as mysterious or foreboding as Gurkish Eaters were in The First Law Trilogy. She felt too normal and too commonplace for an Eater. And the same can be said about the assassin Shenkt who appears much later in the book as well.
All in all, Best Served Cold is well written and has some great moments and action but the lack of any defining characters for the reader to cheer on or cheer against made it difficult to finish. 3 stars.

Allen M Werner is the author of the epic dark fantasy tale
The Crystal Crux Series