Author: Joe Abercrombie Score: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ Completed: January 1, 2025 Last edited time: January 11, 2026 7:41 AM Status: Reviewed Type: Book
Cards on the Table
The Devils sits halfway between the grimdark First Law trilogy and the gamified chaos of Dungeon Crawler Carl. It may have been deliberate and more popular, but is not entirely to my taste.
The book leans hard on the found-family dynamic. The result is serviceable cohesion rather than earned intimacy. With a large ensemble, the book prioritizes interesting combinations of characters over sustained attention to any one of them. That tradeoff makes sense in a long-running series; it’s harder to pull off cleanly in a single novel. The focus fragments, and no single arc quite takes hold.
One choice I appreciated: grounding the fantasy geography in a recognizable version of Earth. It trims exposition and lets the story move faster. More fantasy settings should do this.
The final stretch gains momentum. The plot starts to feel like a late-game round of Magic: the Gathering—synergies clicking, tactics unfolding, pieces finally interacting as designed. But the metaphor holds too well. Each character feels more like a card in play than a soul on the page.