The Wisdom of Crowds by Joe Abercrombie (9)

Great book, great series.  This is definitely worth reading.  I think it is better as a whole than the First Law trilogy, but the first one maybe had the more memorable characters.  Not to say the characters in this were bad, it's just hard to compete with Logen and Glokta.

The only issue I had with this was the pacing.  I flew through the first three quarters of this book.  It's non-stop interesting things happening until the last quarter, then everything slowed down.  I would have been happy if it ended there, but I am still happy.  There was one more conflict of sorts to settle after the main action, but it wasn't really acknowledged and did not serve to drive the narrative at all.  Then suddenly, "oh yeah, this series-spanning issue should probably be addressed before we close things out."  This is a very minor quibble.

One concern I had going in to the series as a whole was how Abercrombie would address the revolution and political turmoil.  I worried things could get heavy-handed or soap-boxy.  Abercrombie did a good job in how he presented both the need/inevitability of revolution and the horror/atrocity of political upheaval.

Abercrombie remains one of my top fantasy authors.  I hear he's done with the First Law world, but I'll read whatever he comes up with next.

The Trouble with Peace by Joe Abercrombie (10) (8 ) (it's eight you fool)

Very good.  Improves upon the first one even.  I have a small suspicion this was the initial start of the story, but in planning (because that's what good authors do), Abercrombie realized he should back it up a bit to establish the characters.  The result it the first book was maybe a little weaker, but this one is tops.  As always the character development is great, I only wish there was a little more time spent on the three second tier PoV characters (Broad, Vick, and Clover for those who've read it). 

This could easily top The First Law trilogy.  It probably will; Abercrombie has improved over the years.

I am considering grabbing The Trouble With Peace since its on sale. A Little Hatred did grab me as much as I remember Blade Itself, but that was literally hundreds of books ago. Abercrombie is still very good and, of course, if you're looking for good characters/development then look no further.

As a trade for TDTCB, seems fair. I wont be reading it, but good for you for giving it a shot!

The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix (5)

This one was my trade off for a friend reading TDTCB.  It's a pretty quick read.  The premise is there is this group of women who've all survived various slasher murder sprees as teens.  Now they are older and have a therapy group.  The whole book is narrated in present-tense by one of the group members.  The back story of each final girl is mostly slowly dribbled in with "newspaper clippings" or articles at the beginning of each chapter.  It kind of makes for a bit of a confusing start as there are sometimes a lot of names with no context until either the narrator or chapter breaks decide to expound on them.  Pretty early on the narrator concludes someone is trying to kill them all, and the rest is her trying to convince people and figure out who is doing what.

It's mostly entertaining.  It's a nice homage to the genre, and I especially got a lot of Scream sequel vibes in that all these women have either capitalized on or been exploited by their trauma by having movie or book deals.  There is some gender commentary throughout, but it makes its point without belaboring it.  There are some small surprises throughout, but by being a homage to familiar tropes, its beats are fairly predictable.  It's still fun.

I wish it had leaned more into the unreliability of the narrator.  She's relaying things as she sees them, and her perception is filtered by her past trauma.  But for the most part she couches her analysis of events and lets us know she's unsure and maybe wrong.  It makes for an easy read that you don't need to spend much thought on, but it would have been better to lean into her misperception.

He's got other books themed around other tropes of the horror genre.  And I certainly won't mind reading them, especially if they are "trades" for my friend reading more Bakker.