4/5

This book was much more interesting than it should've been to me, based mostly on the sheer capacity of Joe Abercrombie to write a good story and keep his readers enthralled.

The story is focused on showing the horrors of war in all of it's many forms and does an amazing job at it, but it never goes too far to make the reading experience unpleasant. The message about war very evident since the start of the book: only very stupid, crazy or broken people enjoy war in any way shape or form.

The characters are very likeable and most of them have very good plot points that manage to leave people interested. But I do believe there were a bit too many characters in the story and a couple of them end up feeling unnecessary. The conclusions to their plots are nice enough, but it really doesn't feel very warranted to have them walking around most of the story. Craw, Gorst and Beck all felt like great representations of different aspects of the theme and I loved it.

The world is great, it made me realize how much I missed this world, even though I sadly didn't get to see much of it in this story, since 99% of it happens in the same place overall, in a couple of days. That was what I meant when I said I liked this book much more than I should, I tend to hate stories that stay stationary for too long and don't branch their locations out, but it did work very well for me.

Spoiler

The endings were pretty great and in-line with the theme. Craw, even though he hates battle and war, knows no other life and even comes back to it in the end. Gorst gets all he ever wanted with his promotion, but he doesn't feel satisfied he's a man that built himself on violence and hatred and doesn't have anything left in his life when not in a battle. Finree understands the weight and the horrors of war and grows as a person through it, finding a renewed respect for peace. Calder grows as a person and even reaches new heights, learning to value his brother and his wife over the mere presence of power, even though he is now subjected to Bayaz's power. Beck is my favorite: he simply goes back home to live his life without war, having learned the horror it holds and the value of human life beyond it. I loved to see Shivers again, he's one of my favorite characters in this series. Corporal Tunny... goes to not fight another war, I guess. I understand the logic of his character, but he was the main one I meant when I said some characters felt unnecessary to the story.

And I do hope we get to see Bayaz dying in one of the following books in the series.

So yeah, overall not the strongest book in the series, but still a damn good story which explains it's message very clearly: Heroes are idiots or monsters.