Red Country

I am an Abercrombie fangirl, really, I am. Once again, we return to this gritty, grimy brutal world, full of terrible people. It's really not a fantasy novel at all this time, it's 100% western, which is really not my style, but it was excellent.

Our main protagonist is Shy South, a farmer in the Near Country, a frontier region west of the Union. She lives on a farm with her two younger siblings and an old guy from the North called Lamb who is a father figure to her. One day the two of them come home from trading in town to find their farm has been burned down, and the children have been kidnapped. This begins a long ordeal of the two of them chasing the bandits who are stealing children, taking them ever more west to the Far Country, the gold rush frontier.

Anyone who has read the First Law trilogy will not really have any issues identifying who Lamb really is. There are more familiar characters from the series. The mercenary Nicomo Cosca and his helper Friendly re-appear, the Mayor in the really disgustingly described frontier town Crease is also a familiar female character, there's Caul Shivers, etc.

But you don't really need to know the characters or the world to get this story. It's full of blood, murder, tragedies, characters dying, and even the sort of happy end leaves your mouth tasting like ash. Abercrombie's character work and his witty writing remain the star of his books.

My favorite character was probably Temple, Cosca's lawyer who turns out to be craven, and useless at most things in life, but useful when it's needed. His romance with Shy (if you can call it that) is one of the few things that warmed my heart here.

This book was so good.

I haven't read the other "First Law World" books, but I'm given to understand that they cover some of the main trilogy characters at least by reference and span about 30 years. Missing some background did not diminish my enjoyment of this one.

Without spoiling too much, I would say Lamb is one of my favorite characters of Abercrombie's. Shy is a great new character, and Temple as well. The western style was so dialed in. It felt like the best parts of True Grit and Blood Meridian at times.

Why not five stars? It's close, I'd probably say 4.5. If anything it's a little too violent (crazy for Abercrombie - I know!), but I started just skipping over some of the later fight scenes. It wasn't so much that there was too much fighting, but rather that it went on too long. I could have done with a little longer introduction and quicker conclusion: although the book ends exactly where it should, it takes a while to get there. I think the book might also have been improved with more Shy and less Temple and Nicomo Cosca.

Red Country is Joe Abercrombie’s latest. A fusion of his grim, gritty and cynical fantasy writing and a lifetime of watching afternoon matinee westerns.

Some might struggle with the concept, perhaps short swords and stetsons sounds a bit off key. But, hey, it is possible to fuse disparate genres - Whedon did it with Firefly and I'm inclined to think that Abercrombie has done the same in Red Country.

There’s a noticeable absence of firearms in the book and I’m pretty sure there aren’t any stetsons, but the story is packed full of tropes even the casual viewer or reader of the western genre will pick up on.

From evil marauding outlaws, to long, wagon laden convoys across vast plains. There’s people searching for gold, a new life or both in the Far Country free from the trials and tribulations of living in the Union – free to build a better version of themselves or to hide the old one.

Shy South hoped to bury her bloody past and ride away smiling, but she’ll have to sharpen up some bad old ways to get her family back, and she’s not a woman to flinch from what needs doing. She sets off in pursuit with only a pair of oxen and her cowardly old step father Lamb for company. But it turns out Lamb’s buried a bloody past of his own. And out in the lawless Far Country, the past never stays buried.


Their journey will take them across the barren plains to a frontier town gripped by gold fever, through feud, duel and massacre, high into the unmapped mountains to a reckoning with the Ghosts. Even worse, it will force them into alliance with Nicomo Cosca, infamous soldier of fortune, and his feckless lawyer, Temple, two men no one should ever have to trust…

Regular readers of Abercrombie will know that the man has a preference for more modern dialogue. There’s a quite noticeable absence of archaic patterns of speech one might expect in Tolkien and a hell of a lot more cussin’. Red Country is presented in the same vein, with perhaps a slightly altered register and exposition that’s in keeping with the western mode.

Folk had swarmed to the bridge like flies to a midden, sucked in from across the wild and windy country to trade and drink, fight and fuck, laugh and cry and do whatever else folk did when they found themselves with company after weeks or months or even years without.

Again regular readers will know that aside from the fast, “in your face” violence, Abercrombie is known for his dark, dry wit and Red Country doesn’t disappoint. There’s a number of exchanges between characters that had me in mind of some of the finer episodes of Deadwood. Not that I am saying that Abercrombie mimics the syntax and English usage in Deadwood but that the two share a similarity of rhythm in the verbal repartee between characters.

Oh and the swearing as well.

The other feature that struck me with Red Country is that Abercrombie’s world changes. There’s progress from the time of The Blade Itself to this point. There’s change wrought by the demographic displacement of the gold rush and by the gradual development of industry. By the end of Red Country we see the arrival of steam for instance.

In that sense Abercrombie's work, and Red Country continues this, is progressive and realistic, there’s little pining for the loss of the status quo. I thoroughly enjoyed the work, felt it straddled both genres well, it was Joe Abercrombie’s western infused fantasy not Joe Abercrombie trying to write a western.

You needn’t have read Abercrombie’s other works, this works very well on its own.

This book was provided by the publisher at no cost to my good person.