What can you tell us about your next novel?

It’s called The Heroes and it is the story of one battle for control of the North, most of the book taking place in the same location and over the course of three days. It follows six characters as they variously take part in the fighting or try to avoid it, as their paths cross and interweave throughout the course of the battle. On the Union side, we have the most disreputable corporal in His Majesty’s whole army, the venomously ambitious daughter of the Marshal in command, and a depressive master swordsman who once served as the king’s bodyguard. With the Northmen, we have a hard-bitten veteran who’s losing his nerve, a young lad eager to prove himself a warrior, and a disinherited prince eager to reclaim his father’s throne by any means necessary, apart from fighting. So where Best Served Cold was a fantasy thriller, The Heroes is a fantasy war story that attempts to investigate the whole notion of heroism. My five-second pitch is Lord of the Rings meets a Bridge Too Far.

introducing

If you enjoyed
BEST SERVED COLD,
look out for

THE HEROES

by Joe Abercrombie

They say Black Dow’s killed more men than winter, and clawed his way to the throne of the North up a hill of skulls. The King of the Union, ever a jealous neighbor, is not about to stand smiling by while he claws his way any higher. The orders have been given and the armies are toiling through the northern mud. Thousands of men are converging on a forgotten ring of stones, on a worthless hill, in an unimportant valley, and they’ve brought a lot of sharpened metal with them.

THE HEROES

For glory, for victory, for staying alive.

Colonel Wetterlant was still having trouble believing it, but it appeared the King’s Own Sixth Regiment was in a great deal of difficulty. The wall, he thought, was lost. Knots of resistance but basically overrun, and Northmen were flooding into the circle of stones from the north. Where else would Northmen come from? It had all happened so damnably fast.

“We have to withdraw!” screamed Major Culfer over the din of combat. “There are too many of them!”

“No! General Jalenhorm will bring reinforcements! He promised us—”

“Then where the hell is he?” Culfer’s eyes were bulging in his face. Wetterlant would never have had him down as the panicky type. “He’s left us here to die, he’s—”

Wetterlant simply turned away. “We stand! We stand and fight!” He was a proud man of a proud family, and he would stand. He would stand until the bitter end, if necessary, and die fighting with sword in hand, as his grandfather was said to have done. He would die under the regimental colours. Well, he wouldn’t, in fact, because that boy he ran through had torn them from the pole when he fell. But Wetterlant would stand, there was no question. He had often told himself so. Usually while admiring himself in the mirror after dressing for one official function or another. Straightening his sash.