Guest Blogger Joe Abercrombie, Author of Best Served Cold, on the Bloody History Behind the Book
Joe Abercrombie, a 2008 finalist for the John W. Campbell award for Best New Writer, has seen his popular the First Law trilogy published in 13 countries. His most recent novel, Best Served Cold, is a standalone book set in the same world. He and his family live in North London.
I’d picked out the Lee Marvin film Point Blank as my inspiration for plot (with its hard-edged violence and obsessive revenge), and renaissance Italy as my inspiration for setting (with its warfare, treachery, intrigue and poison), but I still needed a little more inspiration for my central character – the avenger themselves. My previous books, The First Law, were very much male-dominated, so in the interests of variety I wanted a female central character in Best Served Cold. I also wanted them to have a profession that would put them close to the centre of power, but was also somewhat disreputable. An underworld figure, like Lee Marvin in Point Blank, didn’t quite seem the right recipe...
Some of the most colourful, successful, hated, loved, and morally ambiguous characters of the Italian renaissance were the condottieri. Mercenary generals, often foreigners who’d fought in other wars, drawn to Italy by the constant petty warfare and the easy money, employed by the city states to wage war on their behalf. Sir John Hawkwood, A low-born Englishman who became one of the most celebrated citizens of Florence, is one example, though you can read about their exploits in pretty much any account of Italian history of the period.
Though often highly effective they were rarely reluctant to change sides for the right inducements, or avoid battle in order to extort extra money from their employers. Some even seized power in the very states they were employed to protect, like Francesco Sforza in Milan. That combination of treacherousness, ruthlessness, effectiveness and danger was exactly what I was after for my main character. Also, because mercenary companies were much closer to meritocracies than many other organisations of the time, it wasn’t uncommon to find all sorts of unusual people in command of them. Women, though by no means common, weren’t unknown. A female mercenary general seemed to fit the bill the nicely.
So there we have it. I don’t think it’s unfair to say that Best Served Cold is the finest Female-Lee-Marvin-Machiavellian-Mercenary-Fantasy-Revenge-Story of the current millennium. But don’t take my word for it.
ludo on August 10, 2009 at 01:50 AM
I'm anxiously waiting for Best Served Cold to be available here in Italy, as ebook versions cannot be bought from here. Your posts on your sources of inspiration for the book are not helping me wait. :)
Have you watched Ermanno Olmi's movie "Il mestiere della armi" ("The profession of Arms")? It's a wonderful, bleak, and very realistic movie about the condottiero Giovanni dalle Bande Nere. You would probably like it.
lycan on September 15, 2009 at 06:51 AM
Hi ludo...I'm from Rome,and I have a copy of best Served Cold to sell,as I bought it twice from an english e-bookshop by mistake....so the book is brand new,still packed....my email address is dimitridefilippo@gmail.com
ciao!!
jeux d action on September 24, 2009 at 02:54 AM
As you said the story is somewhat «twisted». There are the usual intrigues with hidden agenda’s and several major plots. Which some definitely has a value for the story and some more of sidetrack. And I do dislike sidetracked stories. Which in my a lot of “modern” fantasy writers is misusing in their books. I think you can have complex story, but to it simply. But will you be surprised by the “twisted and evil doings”. But, not if you have read Steven Erikson or George R.R Martin, which I feel a lot of wiriters today are trying to achieve.