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Joe Abercrombie: The Collected Works (and in what order to read them) SPOILERS


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4 hours ago, Lies And Perfidy said:

I am a strong supporter of Ian McShane In Everything but I dunno quite where he fits. 

While he's not really how I picture the character he could make an interesting Bayaz, he could definitely manage the key quality of Bayaz being outwardly charming while being extremely manipulative and ruthless, although maybe there might too much overlap with his upcoming role in American Gods

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5 hours ago, Lies And Perfidy said:

I am a strong supporter of Ian McShane In Everything but I dunno quite where he fits.



Well, the obvious place is as Papa Ring in Red Country, but the charming-but-manipulative thing is why I thought of him for Bayaz. I mean, both Mr Wednesday and Al Swearengen have that going on.

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Indeed. That is very good casting.

David Wenham is surely too "pretty" to be playing Dogman.

On 23-12-2016 at 3:20 PM, Maithanet said:

McShane was too old to play Cosca when he was on Deadwood over a decade ago. 

Most of these suggestions are too old.  I also think we're reading too much into the size thing.  Logen and Threetrees should be big men, but hardly 6-6 giants or anything.  Most actors given a few months could put on the bulk necessary to do the part justice. 

The only characters that need to be truly huge are Tul Duru and Fenris (and Stranger-Come-Knocking if we do Heroes).  Those are both comparatively minor characters so getting a great actor is less important. 

Well I agree they would probably not cast 6'6 actors and nor should they necessarily do so, but they would preferably at least be tall and burly. They casted Viggo for Aragorn and he is what 5'10? But then I did feel that was massively miscast. 

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I don't think McShane would be well suited for Cosca, because he gives the feel of being an intimidating(former) warrior and I don't get a sense of Cosca ever being intimidating.  He's sort of flamboyant and foppish and has always reminded me of like a non-fat Falstaff, and depending on the novels shows unexpected competence or an unexpected ruthless/evil side.

One thing I would say that makes me wonder about casting Cosca is that he seems to come off somewhat differently in his three appearances, and not just because of character development:

*Cosca in the First Law trilogy has the feel of a flamboyant Italian/Mediterranean type (think Syrio Forel), in part because from Glokta's perspective he's a foreigner

*Cosca in Best Served Cold comes off as a British toff fallen on bad times, again in part because from Monza and Vitari's perspective he's a countryman.

Cosca in Red Country is sort of a composite of Richard Harris and Gene Hackman's characters in Unforgiven. I still think he's mostly British there in depiction but definitely a pretty different guy than either of his two previous apperances.

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5 minutes ago, Joe Abercrombie said:

Yuck, no. Hadn't seen it when I wrote Best Served Cold. Point Blank was the filmic influence, by way of Count of Monte Cristo, Duchess of Malfi, and the career of Sir John Hawkwood.

You have seen it now?  What do you think of the comparison?

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10 minutes ago, Let's Get Kraken said:

Huh, that really surprises me. I'm tempted to ask the same question as Rhom, but I feel like "yuck" probably answers it.

My point remains though, bringing McShane into another western would feel weird, because his character would be living in the shadow of Al Swearengen. And before anyone goes there, I know I pitched Rory McCann as Tul Duru earlier, but his personal gravitas isn't as integral or iconic to Sandor Clegane as Ian McShane was to his role in Deadwood.

Someone like Conan Stevens would be a better fit for Tul Duru, imo.

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3 minutes ago, Let's Get Kraken said:

I feel like that choice fixates more on size than actual acting ability.

Another reason that the Feared should be done with CGI or a motion capture suit.

Yes, not a lot of acting ability required for that role. Fenris does require more acting ability, but Tul Duru has like three lines, and a lot of fight scenes.

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http://www.joeabercrombie.com/2016/12/31/2016-in-review/

A YEAR IN BOOK WRITING – Another slightly piecemeal year interrupted by some side projects and bits and pieces, but I got going in earnest on the new book in the second half and I’m now not far off a reasonable first draft. In case anyone’s unaware what the current project is, I’m working on another trilogy in the First Law world, taking place about fifteen years after Red Country, but my ideal plan is to draft the whole trilogy before publishing the first book, so I can see exactly what I’ve got and where I’m going before going back to revise and fine-tune that first book. There are good reasons why they say the start of a book should be the last thing you write, and I think ideally that applies to series too, where the realities of publishing make it a possibility. The advantage is hopefully a more coherent and polished series plus a rapid and well-planned publication schedule, the disadvantage is a long wait for the first book. I can’t really see a scenario in which you get a new book from me before the end of 2018, and maybe later. But we’ll see…

And:

it’s going to be full steam ahead with the new trilogy, hopefully finishing a first draft of the first book in early feb, so I can then spend a couple of months going over it, refining the characters’ voices and arcs so I’ve got a good foundation for a more detailed plan of the other two books. The dream would be to get well into a draft of the second book by this time next year, but you know what they say about dreams…

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I reread the first trilogy a couple of days ago. I needed a quick read and it's been years, so I thoroughly enjoyed them. And then I came here to find that there was a whole new collection of short stories out there. That was a good surprise, I'm really not used to fantasy authors (whose work I like anyway) to deliver a book with regular intervals.

I bought the book and I have just finished it. I must admit I quite liked it. I usually read collections of short stories differently than normal books, since they tend to take up far more of my time. This was an exception to that rule, since I just tore straight through it and I really liked that. I'm definitely going to reread The Heroes and Red Country when I find the time.

As to the stories themselves, they were nice. I wasn't a big fan of Javre and Shev, but I wasn't actively bothered by them like I was by the Serpent of Talins during BSC. In my opinion they fell on the wrong side of cartoonish, but I liked the glimpse of better characters and settings I got from their part of the collection. Definitely loved the one with Whirrun, a shame we'll probably never see him again in a novel.

My favourite stories were probably Hell, The Fool Jobs and Yesterday, Near a Village Called Barden... . Those were just very good stories, starring characters I have grown really attached to. Hell was the best, since it opened up so many intriguing new questions and enriched the main novels the most by showing us more about Mamun, Kadhiah and Vissbruck than we knew beforehand.  

I felt pretty on the fence about Made a Monster. I agree with @Howdyphillip that a big part of the brilliance of the original trilogy comes from the way we get to fill in the characters backstory with our imagination. Made a Monster demystified that whole backstory a bit to much to my liking. I loved catching glimpses of our original cast (love those characters) and I thought the ending was pretty great (I particularly liked the addition of the uncoiled guts nailed to the walls, that was a nice touch), but I just didn't care for the way Ninefingers behaved in the tent really. It all rang a bit false to me. He wasn't quite Bloody-Nine, nor was he the Ninefingers we knew. I respect that Logen probably changed his way pretty hard after a couple of incidents, but for some reason I'd thought the Bloody-Nine's influence would be felt in another way. More viscious, more hard, more in tune with the ending of the story than the sad delusional conversation in the tent. 

My least favourite story was probably the Glokta one. Pretty much for the same reasons I had troubles with MaM, it just wasn't very grand, the whole capture of Sand dan Glokta. It felt a bit like going through the motions really, very mechanical in a way. Glokta needs to do this stupid thing, because that's what happened and not for something clearly defined. Freedom! was also pretty poor, I was hoping for more Cosca gold, but it wasn't really a story unfortunately. Some Desperado was also rather tame. I remember reading that one if Dangerous Women. I wasn't very impressed then, and I really wasn't now either. 

It's been a while since I last read BSC, The Heroes and Red Country, so I don't know if those questions are answered there but I did have two questions:

1) Whirrun's sword is surely also made by Kanedias right?

2) Do we have any idea in which order Logen acquired his companions? I guess the Dogman followed him over the mountains, I guess Shama Heartless was his first opponent in a duel (I'd love to read a short story about that duel and all the others) and I guess Treetrees was the first opponent Logen spared. Black Dow was probably the latest addition to his merry band, but in which order did Tul Duru, Grim and Forley join the fold? And were there perhaps others who were sparred but died in other conflicts before the start of the First Law trilogy?

On 28-12-2016 at 3:11 PM, The Drunkard said:

A Tommy Wiseau Bayaz would be amazing. 

Only if he gets to direct and write as well :P 

On 21-12-2016 at 2:48 PM, polishgenius said:

Someone needs to tweet Vaughn that the internet has unanimously decided he'd be the best man to direct these as an adaptation so can he please read them already. :P

Please, the best man to direct an adaptation of Abercrombie's work is clearly Sam Peckinpah! Obviously, we need to find a way to bring him back to life, but he would make something crazy out of the Bloody Nine's rampages. And the thought of him doing The Heroes is just  :drool:

On 14-12-2016 at 4:40 PM, Werthead said:

Message from Joe via Twitter: The Circle of the World is basically "the known world". There's more of the planet beyond the edges of the circle, no-one knows how much.

Didn't one of the original twelve magi travel across the sea? I remember reading Bayaz saying something along those lines to Yulwei :) 

On 6-10-2016 at 0:06 AM, Mick of House Guinness said:

In terms of possible characters in the new trilogy a nice possibility is Isern, Cummock-i-Phail's feisty-as-fuck daughter. She is mentioned in the earlier outlines included in The Heroes. She was going to be leading the hillmen in Dow's army and Calder would seduce her for her support. Don't think she is big enough to be a POV but with the north a location in the new trilogy we could see her again.

Yeah, I think she would be a great choice. Good call! :)

On 29-7-2016 at 10:26 PM, akh said:

 but to me the best parts in any of the books always were the Logen, Glokta and Cosca and a few other Northmen POV. Perhaps these characters are more colorful by default and hence easier to find interesting or intriguing, but still. 

Yeah, those guys have always been my favourites as well. That's one of the downsides of reading Joe's  work nowadays, the characters you named are the one we usually end up losing and I don't really gravitate to any of the new ones, with the exception of the characters in The Heroes. 

On 8-8-2016 at 10:41 AM, Let's Get Kraken said:

Didn't Bayaz say that the sons of Euz were all dead? When he talks about killing Kanedias IIRC he say something like the last of the sons of Euz passed from the world. He also speaks about them all having destroyed each other on another occasion.

He did :) The fate of Bedesh is one of the things that really intrigue me, because he seems so linked to Logen and we really don't know anything about him. I'd like to know more. 

On 23-7-2016 at 5:24 AM, redjako said:

They could. My point was more directed around the first trilogy, where the Shanka were pretty much disregarded.

Well, they came back towards the end when Bethod used them as canon fodder. I always just guessed that they didn't make it across the mountains during book one (even armies of Shanka need to eat I guess and perhaps the mountains were a logistical barrier). And from book two onwards the Northern Shanka were recruited by Caurib on Bethod's behalf, so I always thought they were brought back in a sufficiently organic manner. 

On 13-5-2016 at 10:21 AM, Kindly Old Man said:

I thought they might be taking him to turn him into an Eater.

Oh definitely, I agree.

On 13-5-2016 at 3:14 PM, HelenaExMachina said:

I thought they simply respected him for being willing to give up everything and be so self-sacrificial for something he cared about. Sort of showing that the Eaters aren't entirely evil and have some redeeming features. Or at least some kind of honour code they adhere to

That's exactly the kind of quality Khalul looks for in his Eaters I'd say. If you look at Mamun, that's really his baseline throughout all his appearances in the series. Mamun knows that what he has done is horrible and wrong, but he sees his crimes as the only possible way to avenge Juvens and protect the world from Bayaz. He's always casting his decision to break the second law as his sacrifice, so it seems a safe bet that they'd rather take recruit potential Eaters with a similar conviction.

I hope we'll get more information about how Eaters are made in the next trilogy. I know the Second Law seemingly just means that you can't eat the flesh of other human beings, but there has to be some set of additional rules right? Can any regular Joe just get strong by eating someone else? If the Bloody-Nine bites of a man's lips, does he become an eater when he accidentally swallows a piece of flesh? I guess the answer to those questions is no. Otherwise there would be many more of those Eaters running around, because a lot of regular psychopaths would probably spruce up their diet in order to achieve extra power. 

I always assumed Khalul had a way of sensing a victim's potential for additional abbilities. And that he only put effort in those recruits he thought would receive more than just enhanced strength, speed and beauty (those with the possibility to change faces or use magic). Perhaps that's not the case though. Perhaps Khalul just decided to recruit amongst the virtuous and hope for the best :) 

 

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