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Almost too much of a good thing in this blistering novel from Abercrombie. He has always tempered the inherent darkness in his stories with humor and a well-rounded approach to character and irresistible narrative pull. The narrative energy and character strength are not lacking, but this book is just so beastly bleak that the humor may seem almost ill placed. The only resistance to reading that this book gave me was in absolutely dreading what would come next for the characters that I had become attached to. For an author who has made a career of rendering unlikeable characters not just likeable but enthralling this cast is his toughest sell, shades of gray doesn’t begin to cover their individualities. But he gets me to care and in the web of deceit, murder, plots and counter plots, revenge, and bloody war I wondered whether a caper flick or Shakespeare tragedy was going to be the ending reached. I won’t give spoilers but to say it was somewhere in between. The believability of the setting is strength with the war torn kingdom of Styria resembling 16th century Italy or central Europe during the Thirty years war with marauding mercenaries, warring city states, intruding foreign powers, and unfortunate commoners. Abercrombie hasn’t even begun to hint that his energy and invention is ever going wear out.