The Heroes

Executive Summary: My new favorite Joe Abercrombie book!Audio book: I know people swear by Steven Pacy, but I once again got Michael Page as the narrator. I can't compare the two, but I think Micheal Page is pretty good. He does some pretty good voices, though sometimes it's hard to tell the characters apart because while he mostly makes the Northmen and the Union sound different from one another they tended to sound similar to each other. He does a pretty good voice for Bremer dan Gorst though.Full ReviewI like Joe Abercrombie, but not as much as most of my friends seem to. I enjoyed the 4 previous First Law books, but haven't loved any of them. This one comes close though.This feels much more like a sequel to the original trilogy than [b:Best Served Cold 2315892 Best Served Cold Joe Abercrombie https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1347732723s/2315892.jpg 2322406] did, but I'd say it's important to read that first or you'll be missing out on some important details for some of the characters here.We see the return of many of the characters from the original trilogy, a few of whom have been promoted to POV characters. There are only a handful of POVs during most of the book, but there a few parts where he does this sort of “Roving” POV that follows the action from person to person. I'm not sure if I'd have liked it if he did it for the whole book, but in the select places he used it, I thought it worked very well.I liked most of the POVs, but it's a toss up between Curnden Craw and Calder for being my favorite. They are very different characters, and Curden is certainly the more likable of the two, but I just really enjoyed the Smart “Coward” among all the “dumb” brutes of Calder's.Like his other series, he does include a strong female character, but compared to the others I found her by far the weakest/least interesting.This is Abercrombie's war book. Just like a real war, there is only a small amount of fighting, and an awful lot of waiting, speculating and planning. It's really in the in between moments that this book shines for me, but as expected Mr. Abercrombie writes some pretty great actions sequences too.I found the ending of this book to be immensely satisfying, much more so the both the First Law trilogy and Best Served cold. The only real reason this book isn't getting a 5 star rating for me is I found some of the lesser POV story lines far less interesting than the others. Overall a really good book though, Highly recommended.