The Devils is my first Abercrombie book. I’ve had Half a King on my TBR for over a decade, but it hadn’t made its way onto an annual list yet. But as is often the case over the past many years narfna reviewed something ecstatically which had me checking to see if it fit a reading challenge (I’m counting this as weird horror for Read Harder and Black for CBR Bingo) and then it made its way to this year’s list. 
My brain is tired having finished the nearly 550 pages of this book. But the good kind of tired. The “I just conquered a thing and am having THOUGHTS” tired. I’ve been struggling to describe to friends what this book is while I’ve been reading it for the past couple weeks. I’ve generally been going with the idea that it is a story of what happens when a religious man must harness the powers of “evil” persons for the cause of “good”. It is that, but it also dramatically undersells what The Devils does.
The world of the story is an alternate Europe, where the Christian savior was born a woman and supernatural creatures are just another component of society (except the elves, they are humanity’s enemy whom the Crusades were fought against). In this world Brother Diaz is recruited by the holy see to lead a group of convicted monsters in the eyes of the church on their latest mission – to see the discovered heir to the throne of Troy crowned while her cousins would sooner see her dead, as the only way to reunite the divided church and prepare for the eventual return of the people-eating elves.
The thing is Brother Diaz is perhaps the least prepared person to be recruited for this position and the “monsters” are made up of an elf, a werewolf, a vampire, and a necromancer, but they are more than their labels, as are the other members of the congregation that travel with them (Jakob is his own kind of monstrous). So what we end up with is a ragtag group that are bound to comply with the mission, a hapless leader, and a orphan thief on a metaphysical adventure that plays with the ideas of worth, and hope, and faith, and redemption, and justified violence, and remorse. It’s a road comedy, and a dark fantasy, and all the things in between, and I had a great time. Its only not being rounded up to 5 because it was a slow start for me and I struggled initially to keep all the characters clear in my mind’s eye.
Bingo Square: Black. The cover is largely black with a red skull and red and white lettering.
Bingo Blackout!
Bingo 11: Migrant, Review, Black, School, Rec’d
Bingo 12: Black, TBR, N, Family, Citizen
