Red Country - BookWyrm

Published March 26, 2012 by Gollancz.

ISBN:: 978-0-575-09582-3

(1 review)

They burned her home. They stole her brother and sister. But vengeance is following.

Shy South hoped to bury her bloody past and ride away smiling, but she'll have to sharpen up some bad old ways to get her family back, and she's not a woman to flinch from what needs doing. She sets off in pursuit with only a pair of oxen and her cowardly old step father Lamb for company. But it turns out Lamb's buried a bloody past of his own. And out in the lawless Far Country the past never stays buried.

Their journey will take them across the barren plains to a frontier town gripped by gold fever, through feud, duel and massacre, high into the unmapped mountains to a reckoning with the Ghosts. Even worse, it will force them into an alliance with Nicomo Cosca, infamous soldier of fortune, and his feckless lawyer Temple, …

They burned her home. They stole her brother and sister. But vengeance is following.

Shy South hoped to bury her bloody past and ride away smiling, but she'll have to sharpen up some bad old ways to get her family back, and she's not a woman to flinch from what needs doing. She sets off in pursuit with only a pair of oxen and her cowardly old step father Lamb for company. But it turns out Lamb's buried a bloody past of his own. And out in the lawless Far Country the past never stays buried.

Their journey will take them across the barren plains to a frontier town gripped by gold fever, through feud, duel and massacre, high into the unmapped mountains to a reckoning with the Ghosts. Even worse, it will force them into an alliance with Nicomo Cosca, infamous soldier of fortune, and his feckless lawyer Temple, two men no one should ever have to trust . . . RED COUNTRY takes place in the same world as the First Law trilogy, Best Served Cold, and The Heroes. This novel also sees the return of one of Abercrombie's most beloved characters.

3 editions

Kadomi@buecher.pnpde.social reviewed Red Country by Dave Senior Joe Abercrombie

The first Western I ever loved

5 stars

I am an Abercrombie fangirl, really, I am. Once again, we return to this gritty, grimy brutal world, full of terrible people. It's really not a fantasy novel at all this time, it's 100% western, which is really not my style, but it was excellent.

Our main protagonist is Shy South, a farmer in the Near Country, a frontier region west of the Union. She lives on a farm with her two younger siblings and an old guy from the North called Lamb who is a father figure to her. One day the two of them come home from trading in town to find their farm has been burned down, and the children have been kidnapped. This begins a long ordeal of the two of them chasing the bandits who are stealing children, taking them ever more west to the Far Country, the gold rush frontier.

Anyone who has read …

I am an Abercrombie fangirl, really, I am. Once again, we return to this gritty, grimy brutal world, full of terrible people. It's really not a fantasy novel at all this time, it's 100% western, which is really not my style, but it was excellent.

Our main protagonist is Shy South, a farmer in the Near Country, a frontier region west of the Union. She lives on a farm with her two younger siblings and an old guy from the North called Lamb who is a father figure to her. One day the two of them come home from trading in town to find their farm has been burned down, and the children have been kidnapped. This begins a long ordeal of the two of them chasing the bandits who are stealing children, taking them ever more west to the Far Country, the gold rush frontier.

Anyone who has read the First Law trilogy will not really have any issues identifying who Lamb really is. There are more familiar characters from the series. The mercenary Nicomo Cosca and his helper Friendly re-appear, the Mayor in the really disgustingly described frontier town Crease is also a familiar female character, there's Caul Shivers, etc.

But you don't really need to know the characters or the world to get this story. It's full of blood, murder, tragedies, characters dying, and even the sort of happy end leaves your mouth tasting like ash. Abercrombie's character work and his witty writing remain the star of his books.

My favorite character was probably Temple, Cosca's lawyer who turns out to be craven, and useless at most things in life, but useful when it's needed. His romance with Shy (if you can call it that) is one of the few things that warmed my heart here.