What’s supposed be the career advancement of his life took an unexpected turn when Brother Diaz was made vicar of the Chapel of the Holy Expediency. Instead of vestments, hymns, and sermons, Brother Diaz must face dire threats of decapitation, disembowelment, dismemberment, exsanguination… so on and so forth, not only from the enemy, but also from his own congregation.
His first mission came at the heels of his new appointment. He’ll oversee his congregation on their journey to instate the long-lost heir to the Trojan throne. They’ll face battles and assassinations, threats from adversaries known and unknown.
They’ll prevail. Or die trying.
[spoilers ahead]
For my first Abercrombie, The Devils lived up to expectations. The novel captured my attention from the first line and didn’t let go until the last. It’s well-paced and, most importantly, drily humorous. Abercrombie started strong with an action-packed scene featuring an entirely too relatable (and enjoyable) main character heading to the most important appointment of his life — the big break of an ambitious low-ranking official climbing up the bureaucratic ladder. And not just any bureaucracy: The Church itself. Albeit, a female-led Church that, in true Christian spirit, was in schism with its Patriarch-led counterpart — the Church of the East.
Throughout the novel, Abercrombie made a parody of religion, the establishment, and elites in power. From the ten-year-old girl-Pope to frivolous cardinals to a war fought between a married couple because of their marital spat, ridiculous caricatures made up the foundation for the plot.
“Hell is empty,” they say, “and the Devils are here.”
With their diabolical track record and horrific body count, Brother Diaz’s flock fit the definition of ‘devils’ to a tee. Even without considering what they did, the simple fact that they were would be enough to drive a less-than-open-minded individual running in the opposite direction screaming “Heretics!”
What else would you expect when they were, respectively, a vampire, a necromancer, an elf, and a werewolf?
But they were much more than that. Under Abercrombie’s pen, they were deeply flawed people. (With the exception of Baron Rikard of course. The vampire remained an enigma, as was proper for a vampire.) Throughout the journey, we’re given fragments of the Devils’ backstories and witnessed their camaraderie, their struggles, their triumphs, and their regrets. They went through trials and came to revelations of their own: Balthazar became a believer of the Church and its Pope; Sunny made a close friend and learned human intimacy; Even Vigga succeeded briefly in beating her wolf-side into submission.
It’s impossible not to feel for the betrayal, rejection, and loss they suffered when the final battle and its aftermath unraveled everything.
If the Devils were humanized, the human elites were given the opposite treatment. Genderswap the Savior, preach the Twelve Virtues instead of Seven Sins, replace the infidels with specimens of an entirely different species… and your clergy, your politicians, and your nobles remain, as distasteful as ever. Alex’s cousins were pompous greed personified, while the clerics, despite not holding Brother Diaz’s job, had shamelessly adopted ‘expediency’ as their middle name.
If I were to name what I enjoyed most about the novel, it would be the characters. My favorite character growth is Brother Diaz’s metamorphism from a typically narrow-minded, insecure village priest validating himself through the praises of others, to a worldly man sure of himself and his purpose.
It’s not as easy to name a favorite character, as most of the main ensemble are interesting and likeable in their own way. Except, perhaps, Baptiste. She’s not uninteresting or unlikable, merely unrelatable. For a character lasting the length of only one novel, the book where she was featured never offered her inner thoughts or developed her backstory beyond tantalizing hints. Perhaps she’s supposed to be one of the minor main characters. But I felt Baptiste’s death would be more impactful if she had been fleshed out more.
Plot-wise, The Devils is a fast-paced and engaging book to read. Action scenes drove the story forward, and the moments of calm never lasted to become winding or dull. My main issue with it, however, is the predictability of the secondary villains and too much unpredictability in the climax.
After Part One, the actions of the secondary villains became decidedly formularized — one of Alex’s cousins would attack the devils around the end of each Part and die a horrible death. It’s only after the eighty percent mark that things started to change up. Suddenly, the reader’s hit with plot twists left, right, and center.
Some of them are original without sacrificing too much common sense. Others… not so much.
After Alex’s crowned Empress and allied with her last living cousin, Duke Michael was revealed to be the main villain and one of the orchestrators behind Troy’s game of thrones. He professed his deception in using Alex and the devils as decoy to weaken his nephews. Yet it’s never explained why as many as three of Alex’s cousins felt it necessary to be physically present for the assassination (unless it’s to conveniently die when they failed).
It makes no sense to me that a long lost princess with nothing but a piece of paper (even if it was the Papal Bull) to support her claim should warrant that much personal commitment, when the brothers’ biggest rivals were each other and much closer to home. Even if one of the them were to succeed, he would not benefit because he and his forces were away from Troy when the fight for the throne between the remaining contenders began in earnest.
Then there’s the revelation of Alex’s true identity.
For the longest time, I thought the book was going to be a typical amalgamation of the Ragtag Bunch of Misfits trope with the Lost Orphaned Royalty trope. So I was pleasantly surprised when Alex confessed to be, not a Lost Orphaned Princess, but an imposter all along. I was prepared for consequences from her confession: an eavesdropper lurking and holding this vital secret over her head or leaking it.
Nothing of the sort happened.
Alex being not-Alex was a bombshell dropped at the last 20 percent mark. Yet, aside from a short scene of fake-Alex getting cold feet (side-effect of the Actually An Imposter Syndrome), the grand reveal didn’t influence the plot at all. Perhaps pretender-Alex’s deception will come into play in a book later in the series. But for now, Chekhov’s gun rested in plain sight but has yet to be fired.
All in all, The Devils has been a fun fantasy to read. Its wealth of dry one-liners and witty observations never failed to surprise a chuckle out of me. Though I have some issues with the fancifulness of the plot, they didn’t detract from overall enjoyment of the book.
