Best Served Cold

I never thought I'd give a book written by Joe Abercrombie 3⭐️ but here we go...

I loved The First Law trilogy mostly because of the author's character work. And I am sad to say that in this one he fell short.
Let me explain.

Moral consistency.
Your characters do not need to be good people, they do not need to be likeable and they do not need to be impressive. All I ask for is moral consistency.
In the First Law trilogy we followed flawed, terrible, selfish, lost and brutal people, doing some of the nastiest, most gruesome things imaginable. Yet, I loved every single one of them, partially because the books took their sweet time introducing us to every single aspect of them, but mostly because they were who they were and the author did not pretend like they were better. They were flawed assholes doing what needed and did not wax poetically about how they have been wronged. And if they did think about it, it was in a self-deprecating way. There was moral consistency between the actions taken by the characters and their representation in the narrative.

In this book, we have the exact opposite.
We have a lead character who we barely know, and who is represented in a more and more hypocritical way, the further in the book we get. We do get multiple points of view, but I think it's save to say that the main character here is Monza (and to a smaller extent Shivers). I find Monza utterly unlikeable and not only because I believe her to be fundamentally a bad person, but because of the way the author tried to pretend like that's not the case. And since we are talking about her entire arc, I have no way of discussing this in a non-spoilery way.
The whole shtick here, is that at the end of this book, we are supposed to realise that Monza is not guilty of what she considers herself to be, but a victim of the misrepresentation, bad decisions and manipulation of the terrible men in her life - namely her brother. Except, in this relationship, she had the power this whole time. She knew what and who he was, yet did nothing about. Each time she had a choice in the matter and each time she chose to go with it and even took initiative whenever needed. Not to mention that her actions post his death were plenty indicative of her true nature.Let's examine some of the evidence:1. Benna conspired with Orso to have Monza take over the thousand swords by betraying Cosca - a man who took them in when they were nobodies and showed them tremendous kindness, and she just went with it. But not only did she CHOSE to go with the plan to take his place, but she didn't even warn him and as such put his life at danger. Not only that, when she ran to ask his help later, instead of apologising or at least talking normally to him about it, she insulted and abused him continuously. Why? 2. And even if I was willing to grant that Cosca's betrayal was Benna and Orso's fault only (which I'm not), wasn't Monza the one who manipulated Day to betray Morveer? Wasn't she the one who, in her desire to work with someone more amiable, whispered in her ear lies (proven lies, since Morveer was never going to betray Day). And why? Because she didn't like the way he exposed her own hypocrisy when it came to killing many people to get to one? 3. Benna's incompetence and utter lack of interest caused the deaths of thousands of people, including little children and what did she do - jack sh*t. All she did was say "Ah, c'est la vie, let's be more careful next time" (paraphrasing here). And that's not the end of it. Not only did she tolerate her brother's nasty ways - she slept with him. And that is not cute, no matter how you try to present it to me (and yes, there is enough evidence throughout the book that she actually messed with her own brother - disgusting). 4. You'd think that Monza would've empathised with Shivers when he shared that he had lost his brother. Instead she felt only boredom... towards the person she slept with, when he shared something so personal and so similar to her own pain. Great gal...There are many many more examples of her being a nasty selfish asshole - I don't have all day to write them all here.And all of that would've been okay for me, had it not been for the "plot twist" the author was going for. That all this time she was not the monster she thought she was, but a victim of other people's manipulations, who stoically took all the blame. Where is the accountability, sir? So Monza is pure and blameless, despite all the murdering of innocents she did, because she was "manipulated" by men, but Shivers is a terrible person for becoming dejected and wanting revenge after suffering, being mutilated and at the end, ultimately being manipulated by a woman? Where is the moral consistency?
On top of that, I'm gonna admit, I felt bored through a big chunk of this book. I couldn't care less about these battles and these power struggles. Because I didn't know the people who were involved. We took close to no time to get to know anybody. The author counted on some notable “cameos” from the original trilogy and while I loved seeing them, I was ultimately uninterested in this cast.
And if it wasn't for the amazing writing style, strong beginning of the story and, of course, the one and only Nicomo Cosca, I would've probably given this book a lower rating.