A world painted so vivid, like brushstrokes of paint on canvas; characters so real they seem to live as people in your imagination

The main character is as fucked up as you’d ever expect your most hated book antagonist to be. Only this time, he’s not an antagonist. He’s the main character.

The bloodthirsty deviousness and callousness that came to Rikke and Leo ( I spare no sympathy for him anyway), the kindness that would sometimes peek through Savine’s hard veneer – it was ...

The parts that stuck out the most for me were the war depictions. Abercrombie writes them so well I felt I was at the front lines – the racing thoughts in the heads of the soldiers as they rush ...

It’s a real-life lesson in leadership, an allusion to pretentious saviour-Stalins and Christ-Hitlers who believe that they can change the world by breaking it first.

The book proves it’s possible to write Grimdark fantasy without anti-heroes (take that Mark Lawrence and Joe Abercrombie fans!).