 Hey guys it's Leanna and I'm here today to talk about The Heroes by Joe Abercrombie. As stated in every video this year I reread the first law books in anticipation of the release of the newest one. Great, caught up, wonderful. So The Heroes if you've seen my ranking video that I posted that probably needs to be updated but I ranked all the first law books that were out at the time of filming it and this was the bottom. This was my least favorite first law book. So I was very curious to reread it and this will be a non-spoiler review. I might mention some characters that appear in the first law trilogy which is a spoiler insofar as they didn't die in the first law trilogy therefore they are alive in this and if you think that's a spoiler then that's then don't watch this. Anyway so yeah The Heroes I was quite curious to reread. I by no means hated it. I don't hate any first law books. I like being in the world of the first law all the time, all day, every day. That's why I'm freaking rereading all of them. I wouldn't be doing this if I didn't think that was a good time. So I mean I remember thinking parts of it were funny. I remember thinking parts of it were interesting but I both in that ranking video and then in another video I did where it was like a bunch of different books not just Abercrombie books where I was talking about how favorite authors have let me down being like I expect great things from them but they've written things that I just kind of was like meh and in that video I mentioned The Heroes being you know like I expect better from Abercrombie and being kind of disappointed with it. So yeah like very low expectations going this in as first law goes. It can only go up from there because I was not loving this the first time that I read it. Something though that I didn't really know before reading it the first time which I did know I learned after the fact and even then having only read it once learning that about it made me like retroactively not like it but respect it if that makes sense but so this time going in I knew what I was getting myself into both in terms of having read it before and also having more context for the project of this book and knowing the project of this book before reading it. I'm going to put this down as just having. What I learned that I didn't know the first time was that the three standalone's are kind of not not only but kind of um this project of Abercrombie is to kind of like use film as an inspiration to kind of tell a story in the world of the first law. And uh the original trilogy is like taking a traditional fantasy arc and kind of like flipping it on its head and shitting all over it. So the the standalone's are a different project. So Vester of Cold is um Abercrombie's take or kind of a he was inspired by like revenge thrillers. He specifically named Point Blank as kind of like a revenge thriller that he really liked and then you know blended it with some Machiavellian politics and you know his own like first law flair and bibbidi-babbidi-boo you got Vester of Cold. And then for the heroes he was inspired by All Quiet on the Western Front and for Red Country which is not what this video's about he was inspired by the Western Unforgiven. Didn't know any of that the first time that I read it and I didn't really know before reading it that more or less it doesn't have a plot. And I've had a lot of people tell me that because I've expressed such frustration over it being kind of plotless that they went into the book super duper prepared for that and for that reason probably enjoyed it more. So I'm doing my I did myself that favor this time. I knew that going into it and was prepared for that. And so I enjoyed it more the second time is what all of this is like building to. I gave it four stars originally I gave it three. It's still not I don't think it would ever be my favorite first law book. The project of it I guess like if you I by no means want to say that this book reads like a Marvel movie it doesn't. But if you go to the cinema expecting to see like this year's Oscar winner something like you know the Shawshank redemption or something and that's like what you go into something expecting and then you enter the cinema and instead you watch Thor 3 Ragnarok you're gonna be like what the fuck. So expectations are really being you know important thing. We've talked before on my channel and on many channels about like being overhyped for things being underhyped for things having a mistaken impression of what this is going to be. So like that's a lot of it. And so going into the heroes the first time I knew that it was a story a standalone in the world of the first law. That's pretty much all I knew. So I just was reading it and reading it and reading it and going like what's the plot. Where is the plot. So this time knowing that that's not really the point of this book and it was never gonna be the point of this book and it's not like it was the point and he failed at that point. It wasn't like a goal of Abercrombie's it wasn't he was like I'm gonna make this book like be the most plot heavy blah blah blah and then just like completely fail to stick the landing on that like that wasn't ever the project of this book. So to expect that from it is unfair. You also don't have to like the project of a book but it's important to know it because like you're setting yourself up for failure and you're setting the author up for failure if you don't pay attention to what they are attempting to do because if what they are attempting to do is something that does not appeal to you at all so it doesn't matter if they're successful at it because the thing they're trying to do is a thing that does not appeal to you you know you're gonna hate it. That's just how it is. So I obviously did not hate it. I didn't even hate it the first time when I didn't know but I liked it a lot better because the like rubric for measuring my satisfaction with it was different both because like your rubric for measuring your enjoyment on a reread is always different from a first read because this isn't you're never you're not really able to score it on things like a surprise or a twist because like you've read it before um it's a different rubric always on a reread but in particular with this knowing now what I did not know before not because I've read the end of the book but because I have more context for what the author was trying to accomplish than I could adjust my scoring accordingly. Not that I actually score things like that makes me sound really organized and anal retentive. I don't like have a scoring system. My ratings are like feel ratings. I read it and I'm like that feels like four. Why? I don't know it just feels right. My satisfaction was greater because not only did I know from having read it before that it doesn't really have much of a plot. I also know now that it wasn't a point of it. That was never a goal. Okay I think I've repeated myself a bit sorry but yeah so what is the heroes? What was the goal? I mean I've never actually seen Alcon White on the western front but like the point of the heroes if there is a point is really just to tell the story of several days of battle and that's what I kept complaining about when I read it the first time. I was like it's literally just a few days of battle. Like there's no like this isn't like the two towers movie in Lord of the Rings where like yes a very large chunk of the two towers is the battle of helms deep but like the heroes is like if the two towers was only the battle of helms deep with nothing before nothing in between and nothing after just the battle of helms deep which in fairness is my favorite part of two towers and is why two towers is my favorite of the Lord of the Rings movies. If you don't know that going into it if you're not expecting that you're you're gonna very possibly be put off by it like I was but now going in again knowing that having read it before knowing that that was the point of this was to just like as a project as a thought exercise as a writing craft experiment to just tell a few days of battle from multiple perspectives and get into the headspace of what it is to be in a battle for that long you know the kind of delve into the pointlessness of battle itself showing all the varieties of reactions to carnage that you're gonna have like from people who this is their first time seeing violence in their lives ever to people who have been in multiple wars and thrive on the violence to people who've been in multiple wars and have survived them because they do everything possible to avoid violence it's all there there's also some you know characters from the first law trilogy uh Bremberdan Ghorst and Bayaz is there because Bayaz is always there you get to see Call of Shivers I mean I like Call of Shivers a lot after he's probably after Sandan Glokta. Call of Shivers is probably my second favorite character so every book that doesn't have Sandan Glokta in it fortunately does tend to have shivers in it so I'm always happy so like shivers pops up you have uh Black Thou and you have the dogman and I mean I'm probably forgetting some because there's there's a lot of people like doing stuff in the heroes so obviously there's new faces new faces that you meet for two seconds and then they immediately die because this is the battle I really enjoyed it this time I definitely did I can actually say I very much enjoyed rereading the heroes because my the part of my brain that's like trying to suss out the point of something was turned off because it wasn't needed here because that isn't what we're doing here so I don't want to make it this sound like I think the heroes is like a fun lifestyle vlog but it's kind of like the mindset of like watching like a book review versus watching a reading vlog like a book review is there to give you some information to tell you about like what is this book like maybe what the plot is maybe something about the author you know what type of reader this would appeal to with the prose is like is giving you information and there's a definite point to the video hopefully whereas a reading vlog doesn't really have a point it's to just kind of like exist with for a few days with this person who is reading eating relaxing and just kind of like existing in their daily life for whatever it is a weekend a week whatever it is so the heroes is like it's like a war vlog that's the best way I can explain it and like that is the enjoyment that you derive out of it like I mean it's not relaxing it's not like oh let me just like curl up and cozy up to this war vlog like a troll a lot I mean it's obviously gritty and violent and and disturbingly so at times but that is kind of the vibe and the point is just battle it's just what it's like for all these different people coming at it from different perspectives and want different things out of it and there's you know because Abercrombie is a character driven writer and so the characters leap off the page there's tons of little characters that like you might have only just met in this book and you will never see again but you have a very distinct image of your in your mind of who they are and you very quickly grasp where they've come from why they are here how they feel about being here what they want next in life even if they end up dying on the next page like they these are fully fleshed out human beings and you're just seeing the like utter chaos and messiness of conflicting political goals conflicting personal goals conflicting motives conflicting strategies just everything is just like this it you come away from it feeling like a disease I don't say glorious mess because it is not glorious it is a mess the people in charge don't necessarily know what they're doing even if they know what they're doing what they're trying to do may not be realistic or it may be completely like ruined by in its execution by people who don't actually understand what the higher-ups are trying to achieve so they interpret it badly and there's people with their own goals on a lower rung of the pecking order that are perhaps working against those goals not actively trying to hurt the strategy of the people who are in charge but they have their own goals and they're working towards those and those might actually be in conflict with the goals of the people in charge of them and there's just all these like everybody is just working for themselves and trying to figure out themselves and their own issues and it is this like jumbled disaster I mean it's it's brilliant on that level like to write so many characters all like I don't understand I don't know how an author is able to do this without having like a multiple personality disorder to be in the headspace of so many different people convincingly so so I mean it is a master class in how to just dive into the heads of like hundreds of characters all in one book and feel like you actually dove into the head of each one it wasn't like you've got you know your two to five main characters who you really understand and then a bunch of cardboard cutouts that are like living and dying in the vicinity to like round out the picture every single person is a person and there are some interesting insights also into characters that you did know from the first law trilogy because they're more front and center now so you get to a deeper dive into their headspace and it does a little bit recontextualize what you thought you knew about them in the first law trilogy because this isn't a situation where like they changed so much over the course of the heroes that they are different from how they were in the first law trilogy maybe a bit of that but like a lot of it is like you weren't really ever in their head before they were around but you weren't in their head before and now that you are in their head i feel like people say that a lot of times like you it's just as well we can't read minds because you really wouldn't want to know people are thinking so now actually seeing what these people are thinking people that you saw around and probably felt like you had a solid handle kind of on what's going on with them even though the plot wasn't ever really focused on them and now seeing what what is really going on up there how they actually feel about things is like oh yikes and it's not unbelievable it's not like why didn't this character in first law and that's not at all and they came off like it's i'm like in retrospect i mean that doesn't not fit with who they were i just was like it's like picking up a rock and seeing all the like critters underneath and being like oh i think it's an excellent book i didn't not think it was excellent the first time i read it i was just like what was the point of that and there wasn't a point and also the point wasn't to not have a point kind of like the first law trilogy is sometimes where he's like kind of laughing at you for expecting a point the heroes isn't like that it's just that was never really the type of thing what we were trying to do here so knowing that is extremely helpful and it helps me like it better so i'm glad to know and now having lived it i can see why me being so upset about that and complaining about it so much helps people to enjoy this book better because they didn't go in expecting what this book was not so yeah i mean i definitely recommend the heroes i recommend the whole world of the first law and never at any point have i ever said that one of them is skippable because like back when i was like well this book has no point and like well can you skip it absolutely not because it does still affect the game board of the world and people where the positions people are left and at the end of the book affect like alliances power structures political situations that affect everything that is to come after so no you cannot skip it you absolutely cannot skip it it affects things like in a very real way so i mean for a book that is pointless like any war or battle is going to have an effect so like people who are where the the chips have fallen at the end when all is said and done it has a great effect and like that's not what the book is about it's not about exploring the effect that this has had on the world but later books do do that so this has affected things in a way that this book isn't interested in exploring but nevertheless that effect is real in this world and it does come up very much so in subsequent books so the heroes gave it four stars after giving it three stars the first time highly recommend all the books in the world of the first law but again i always recommend reading them in publishing order because or publication order because they do build on each other and it's just like the heroes like even though it is pointless it plot wise it affects things in a very very real way and i don't recommend reading the new trilogy or red country or even sharp ends without having read the heroes because it affects stuff and i just think it's it's very key to know what this is before you read it because it will increase your enjoyment or or it may tell you that this is not the book for you in which case well then don't read the rest of the world of first law because you can't skip it but like knowing that about it like don't expect it to be something that it was never trying to be don't make my mistakes let me know in the comments down below if this was helpful at all or not whatever you want to let me know i post videos on saturdays other random times as well but definitely saturdays so like and subscribe join my patreon if you feel so inclined and i'll see you when i see you