Jacob Levy's Reviews > The Devils

Rick and Morty ass book (derogatory)

If I had to describe this book in one word, it would be cheap. Cheap action, cheap humor, cheap thrills is about all you're gonna get here.

I feel like I was promised something I didn't get, and maybe that's on me, but I don't think so. This book feels like it's setting up a more interesting conflict, and as such, probably should have been shorter. I was told about man-eating elves, of which there is decidedly none. I was told this would be "Fantasy Suicide Squad," a comparison I do not get and leaves me with the impression that the ones making it haven't read one issue of the comic (or even seen the movie). Suicide Squad is a group of people being forced to do good, but they are bad people. The Devils are a group of people forced to do good, but they're good people who are misunderstood, I guess?

The world-building in this book is quite unusual. The book is set in an alternate history Earth, but this is borderline insignificant. At first when I wasn't scratching my head wondering why not, if Abercrombie was going to change so much about the history and world, just set it in its own unique setting. But as the story progressed, and it became clear how unimportant these changes were to the text, I was scratching my head, wondering why he even bothered with alternate history in the first place and didn't just set it in real-world medieval Europe.

The Plot is uninspired and just spins its wheels for the middle 50% of the book, until in the last quarter it tries to twist so hard that it completely unravels.

The characters are undoubtedly a spot of good, as is usual with Abercrombie. However, the cast is also a bit crowded, as is usual with Abercrombie, but this didn't bother me as much as it has in some of his previous books. Out of the eight main characters, four of them really stood out to me, 2 of them were so-so, and two of them were glorified devices custom-built to be get-out-of-jail-free cards for the plot.

Abercrombie's prose is typically very good and still is here, but gets a bit repetitive at times. Additionally, Abercrombie seems to have made being funny his new personality. For some reason, he feels the need to cram in a joke wherever he can in this book. And not even very good ones. I've never really been the biggest fan of Abercrombie's humor, and sometimes it would even go over my head. But when it did get through to me I could always appreciate a certain amount of wit and cleverness that felt intentional. But in The Devils it feels like he's throwing whatever he can at the wall and seeing what sticks. When its not vomit and poop jokes, its souless, marvel movie banter that is so pervasive in the text that its impossible to ignore.