Dear Readers,
My name is Joe Abercrombie, and I’ve been signing books for Goldsboro for at least fifteen years now. The first time, I signed maybe fifty first editions in the basement of their shop in Cecil Court, but with each book things have taken a step up: a hundred books, then two hundred, a numbered dedication page, then a sprayed edge, they knocked through into the shop next door, then the one next door to that. These days, as you’ll know, they run a subscription list and sell hundreds, if not thousands of copies of each signed special edition they do.
In the past I’ve written dark and gritty fantasy fiction filled with crunching action and heartwarming romance, insightful commentary and shocking twists, vivid characters in unlikely situations, all shot through with a rich vein of cynical humour. But like Goldsboro, I want to grow and develop, so this time around I thought I’d mix things up, and write a gritty and dark fantasy fiction filled with insightful action and cynical romance, shocking commentary and heartwarming twists, unlikely characters in crunching situations, all shot through with an even richer vein of vivid humour than before.
Above all, I wanted to write something fun.
The result is THE DEVILS, a book set in an alternative Europe under constant threat of elf invasion, following a set of monsters employed by the ten year old Pope to solve the problems the righteous are not equipped to tackle. They include an oversexed werewolf, an overconfident magician, a geriatric vampire, an invisible elf, and a knight cursed with immortality, all led by a monk who never even wanted to be a monk on a fool’s errand to install a thief on the throne of Troy.
Along the crooked path it tackles such deep philosophical subject matters as the nature of religion, the possibility of redemption, the position of the soul in the body, what truly makes a hero, when should be the date of easter, whether elves can swim, and the particular fascination of a certain type of dumpling.
I very much hope you like it…
Joe
