RED COUNTRY by Joe Abercrombie

Narrated by Steven Pacey

     Always Look on the Bright Side of Life

After listening to the first three hours I decided to bail on Red Country. The senseless violence and crude circumstances of medieval mercenary life was getting to me. I missed my squeaky clean corridors of space. Then I went back and re-read some of the five-star reviews. So now I am going to complete the book.  

Five days later…

I finished Red Country after remembering what I found attractive about the First Law trilogy: humor.  It may seem entirely paradoxical but amidst the Sam Peckinpah carnage—where men are exsanguinated in nearly every scene—there lies an undercurrent of sanguine whimsy. Joe Abercrombie is one of the foremost modern practitioners of the insult.  His characters are all adept and the underhand compliment. Once the mind is trained to listen for these barbs, even the most mangled melee becomes melodious.  Find this optimistic hook and you will have found the key to Amercrombie, and hours of enjoyable listening.

Steven Pacey is one of those one-man-show performers. Even with a cast of thousands he manages to give every character, no matter how minor, their own distinct voice. And Pacey’s sense of pacing is marvelous. He instinctively knows how to give each scene the right level of energy to achieve the greatest dramatic impact. Without his narration I would not have been able to engage with the story.  Like Bronson Pinchot he can take a story of passing interest and make it into something special.

P.S. — Several Joe Abercrombie books have been reissued by a new publisher and the reviews for the older versions are no longer available unless you already own the title. There are literally thousands of ratings and hundreds of fine reviews on the original audio versions of Joe Abercrobmie’s First Law trilogy. If you are new to his writings, these are now inaccessible to you. This is unfortunate, since it was the opinions of my fellow reviewers that convinced me to try Abercrombie’s books in the first place. If you wish to know what I thought about Joe Abercrombie’s First Law trilogy, and Best Served Cold, you can find them on my reviews page.