Picture the monsters from an old episode of Scooby-Doo — a vampire, a werewolf, a necromancer and a knight who simply will not die — except this time they are all real.
Let Hammer Horror handle the casting, turn this cheerful collection of nightmares into a medieval Suicide Squad and hand the story to Joe Abercrombie.
The result is The Devils: a quest that is as bloody as it is funny, carried by a congregation of monsters you end up liking far more than is sensible.
This review contains no major plot spoilers.
Official UK cover of The Devils, artwork by Will Staehle.
A medieval Europe through the looking glass
With The Devils, Joe Abercrombie leaves the world of The First Law behind and takes us into a completely reshaped medieval Europe.
The names and places feel familiar, but history went off the rails a very long time ago. The dominant faith looks much like Christianity in a largely female form: the Saviour was martyred on a wheel, the Church is led by a woman Pope and many of its offices are held by women.
There are priests, brothers, cardinals, Popes… and Devils.
To the east, the elves bear little resemblance to Tolkien’s graceful immortals. They are hated, feared and remembered as ruthless conquerors who may return to eat their way across Europe. Sunny’s place in the group naturally makes that terror rather more complicated than it first appears.
Everything is recognisable, yet always slightly wrong. That crooked familiarity is one of the great pleasures of discovering this world.
Putting a thief on the throne of Troy
The spectacularly hapless Brother Diaz finds himself appointed vicar of the secret Chapel of the Holy Expediency, buried beneath the splendour of the Celestial Palace.
His mission sounds simple enough: escort Alex to Troy and put her on the throne.
Naturally, nothing is ever simple in an Abercrombie novel.
Alex is a street thief who asked for none of this. She would almost certainly rather keep stealing to survive than become the central piece in a vast religious and political game.
Brother Diaz must nevertheless take her across Europe and the Mediterranean, including a memorable passage through Venice, while avoiding assassins, betrayals and the countless disasters waiting around every corner.
To keep them alive, the Church calls upon a very special congregation.
When the Hammer Horror cast arrives
There is Baptiste, a former pirate who seems to have held almost every job imaginable; Jakob of Thorn, a knight who stubbornly refuses to die; Baron Rikard, a vampire; Balthazar Sham Ivam Draxi, a world-renowned necromancer — especially if you ask him; Sunny, an elf who can vanish from sight; and Vigga, a northern werewolf as dangerous as she is unpredictable.
Add Brother Diaz and Alex, and you have a magnificently dysfunctional band of misfits.
You could almost pull out their character sheets, roll the dice and begin a tabletop campaign. Each has a speciality, a history, a weakness and a highly individual approach to morality.
Watching them attempt to work together is an adventure in itself.
Monsters who are terribly human
The book’s greatest strength is not merely its spectacular cast.
Abercrombie’s real trick is making us care about beings the world calls inhuman — beings who have, in several cases, done genuinely monstrous things.
Baron Rikard is still a vampire, which means human blood and rather a lot of bodies. Vigga happily follows her most basic instincts. Balthazar’s magic is not exactly known for respecting the peace of the dead.
Abercrombie never scrubs them clean and pretends they are noble heroes. He shows us their crimes, weaknesses, feuds and contradictions. Then, almost before we notice, he also reveals their wounds, their loyalty and the stubborn scraps of humanity they still possess.
Once the ambitions of supposedly respectable nobles and churchmen come into view, the question becomes unavoidable: who are the real Devils?
Vigga, my runaway favourite
Of the entire congregation, Vigga is by far my favourite.
She sometimes behaves more like an animal than a human being and gives herself over to her lowest instincts without the faintest trace of shame. She ought to be purely terrifying — and she certainly can be.
Yet she is also utterly adorable and deeply endearing.
Vigga can be savage, hilarious, tender, alarming and unpredictable within the same scene. Abercrombie turns one of the group’s most dangerous creatures into its most irresistible character.
For me, there is no contest: she is the star of the book.
A campaign with no long rest
The journey to Troy often feels like a vast tabletop campaign run by a Dungeon Master who has decided the players will never, under any circumstances, be granted a long rest.
Every stage brings a new encounter, ambush, betrayal or catastrophe. The group crosses cities, boards ships and tumbles into situations that can feel like successive levels of an enormous dungeon crawler.
One sequence in an abbey surrounded by a graveyard particularly stayed with me. The atmosphere, the dead, the magic and the people involved combine in several scenes I will remember for a long time.
But I promised no spoilers, so I will leave it there.
For all that relentless momentum, the novel never becomes a mere pile-up of fights. The relationships, arguments and gradual changes within the group give the journey its real power.
The first step into a vast world
Without revealing the ending, The Devils finishes by doing something I especially enjoyed.
For most of the novel, the goal is pleasingly specific: get Alex to Troy and place her on the throne. It has the shape of a single quest, with a party, a destination and an ever-growing collection of obstacles.
Then the curtain rises.
The world suddenly becomes much larger, and the stakes reach far beyond this first expedition. One mission ends, but it feels above all like the opening of a far more ambitious story.
This is the first volume of a trilogy. The second, The Heretics, is due in May 2027.
OrionOdin86, naturally, did not wait: a signed edition is already on preorder.
The novel’s cinematic potential has not escaped James Cameron either. Lightstorm has acquired the adaptation rights, and Cameron is set to write the screenplay with Joe Abercrombie. There is no guarantee the film will make it all the way to the screen, but the pairing feels almost absurdly perfect.
Until the next book arrives, here is my signed first English edition of The Devils.
It is a beautiful object, and a souvenir that makes this particular reading experience even more special to me.
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