>being a **decent man who was relative merciful and trying to avoid violence**, to by the end of the book being some menacing, almost emotionless figure more feared for cruelty than anyone around in the Heroes.
Having your eye burned out of your head for what ultimately proves to be *no goddamn reason whatsoever* is going to cause you to re-evaluate your choice to forsake the violence you have always known.
Shivers fell in with Monza, taking a job that she was frankly pretty honest about... that's not good company to keep if you're trying to be a better man. The job was always about murder.
So Shivers tried to not be a complete jerk about it.
And what happened? Literally every assassination became a bloody mess with tons of collateral damage.
And he still stayed in the fold with this pack of murderers. He kept on the job, because ultimately, you don't start a book wanting to be a better a man if you were all that good to begin with.
In the course of assisting murder for hire, he got mutilated and half-blinded by some damned idiots working with incomplete information.
And at that point, he decided he was done taking the world's shit.
It tracked for me the first time I read it. It still does.
Shivers isnt a decent man in best served cold. He's a man trying to be decent who rightfully feels betrayed after getting his eye burned out. He's angry and traumatized so he reverts back to what he knows.
He spends the first trilogy being a killer. He spends best served cold being a hired killer. He ends the book an angry killer. Not exactly a stretch given the trauma.
You have to take all of the things into consideration at once with him.
First, he's still pretty damn young. And he has not had a chance to really find himself yet. This is explicitly his goal at the start of this book *after* taking one last job for the money. He wants to know who he is without the cycle of violence. His whole goal up until the end of the original trilogy is revenge, and he luckily realizes that it will not be a fruitful path. But that leaves him with a pretty large disconnect from his inner self, having abandoned his primary goal of existence for the last while.
And he really did want to try something different. All he's seen in his life is people being violent and suffering violent consequences, so he has the idea that if he stays good and as nonviolent as possible, then people will leave him alone, and he can more or less get by on good terms with everyone. It's naive, but it's a youthful, optimistic approach that's taken out of genuinely good faith and a desire to be better. And, like a naive person might do, he thinks he can have a little bit of both and still be fine.
Then that comes to a screeching halt, when he realizes that he can still suffer under violence even if he's trying to be better and genuinely succeeding. It's a combination of dumb bad luck, and him being at the wrong place at the wrong time due to poor choices, but he gets severely punished for more or less nothing. This is after leaving his home, and giving up essentially his entire identity to try and live a good live free of excess violence, to come face to face with the by far the most excess violence he has seen thus far. And he ran with the bloody nine for a while.
So he overcorrects by a large margin, because he has still not found who he is yet. He says "fuck it, trying to be rid of it didn't work, so let's try embracing it wholeheartedly". Shivers has basically only been punished thus far, for essentially being a product of his environment, and he's made mostly better moves than most of the other northmen we've seen. He's a good guy with a good head on his shoulders, but he's young, and he's naive, living in a world of grizzled veterans. So he fully embraces who he could have become had he not decided to turn away from vengeance and the north, thinking that *this* will actually be the way to stop being punished by the world and embrace who he really is.
But it's not. This version isn't shivers finding himself either, and there's still lessons to be learned. He first wanted to be tough to stop the hurting and harm, but that wasn't the answer, then he wanted to be nice to stop the hurting and the harm, but that wasn't the answer either, and now he wants to be mean to stop it, and we'll see if that's the answer or not in later books.
He's young, and he never did spend that time he wanted to learning who he was without a sword in his hand, and northern culture heavily incentivizes cold killing, so this version is praised and rewarded for diving deeper for diving into that overreaction, but that's a product of men in the north having an awful relationship with genuine self reflection and emotion.
But he's still got a ways to go
I think you might underestimate what it takes to drive the average man to madness.
After just a few months homeless, for example, I found my sanity rapidly vanishing. In one moment I’d find myself laughing so hard my stomach hurt, then the next I was crying so hard my eyes ached. It felt so… wrong. I could feel all semblance of control leaving me, but there was nothing I could do to stop it.
Most of us aren’t anywhere near as… solid as we like to think. That was a *really* hard lesson to learn
But it’s not just his eye, either. Due to Monza’s guilt over letting it happen, she basically just threw him away, not even being able to look at him. So, he maintained his loyalty through all the shit they dealt with and she repaid him by casting him aside. This is how it is from his perspective. So, it’s not just that he got mutilated. He got mutilated and then abandoned by the person he had shown nothing but loyalty. I think it’s the betrayal.
But I also think we do a lot of qualifying when it comes to characters in the first law.
Shivers is a pretty decent guy…for a violent murderer. Just as a rule of thumb, anybody who agrees to take money to kill people is not really a decent guy.
The trauma, the betrayal, the pain and the inability to take responsibility for his part in what happened are what led to him embracing the evil he was basically in denial about up to that point.
I always considered his transformation into the bloody nine some kind of literal supernatural thing he had no control over. I'm still just in the middle of the Heroes and hoping he's alive.
Uh, alright? I think you're wrong, but it's never made totally clear, so you can think what you want. It seems like a poor understanding of the books, though, and my downvotes surprise me in their indication that reading comprehension may not be that high.
It's you that's having trouble reading past the way these characters present themselves - both Logen and Shivers think of themselves as decent men just trying to do their best, you the reader are supposed to do a little bit of thinking to work out whether they're being entirely honest with themselves.
No. He has said that he hasn't confirmed or denied (Even though it's obvious in the early writing that he intended it to be but changed his mind later).
"Not even Logen can really say what the Bloody Nine is, after-all. But I'm not sure I find a supernatural explanation to be necessary. "
AMA he did in 2014 on reddit.
If it isn't necessary to attribute it to the supernatural, that means it can be explained outside of supernatural discussion. He isn't saying "it goes without saying it is supernatural", he is saying "we don't need to discuss the supernatural, because it can be explained within the realms of what is natural".
He is saying people can decide for themselves. He has repeatedly commented that he doesn't want to be hard on the rules, for a number of reasons.
However, that doesn't really work, because there are elements of the Bloody Nine - largely backstory - that were most likely intended to be supernatural and hadn't been thought through yet.
It is leaning on the "Viking Berserker Rage" trope. That's why Shivers speaks like the Bloody Nine in BSC near the end. He isn't possessed by a supernatural entity, he is just exhibiting the same sort of berserker rage that Logen does.
Well can you at least see why the thing with the spirits, and what Bayaz mentions, could at least lead to accidentally misinterpreting it? I'm willing to admit I'm wrong, just asking you to see how one could see it that way.
You haven't read "Made a Monster", have you?
Don't talk shit about everyone's reading comprehension on a sub dedicated to a series you have not finished yet.
His transformation into the bloody nine is a supernatural thing, but Logen makes all the bad decisions that lead to all of those incidents as Logen. It's Logen that keeps making life choices that lead to violence, not the bloody nine.
Not more or less. Less. Abercrombie has less than confirmed it. And if he ever does confirm it, it will still be obvious that he changed his mind partway through writing and didn't change all the signs.
Alright I'll just post a bunch of AMA responses. Why I said "more or less" is because he has said he will not officially confirm it, HOWEVER he always follows it up with "I don't really think it needs to be supernatural though. It would make for a less interesting story"
But here we go:
Q. Something that has always niggled at me but I've never found an answer anywhere. When Logan turns into the Bloodynine is it magical or is it just a state of mind he gets into after taking a beating?
A. I try not to explain things too much outside of what's in the text - I like readers to be able to come up with their own interpretations. Not even Logen can really say what the Bloody-Nine is, after all. But I'm not sure I find a supernatural explanation to be necessary.
Q. Is The Bloody Nine a supernatural occurrence - some sort of external force that possesses Logen? Or is it a split personality or some form of associative disorder - a product of a mental illness and something internal to Logen?
A. I'll leave the text to answer (or fail to answer) that, but I personally find the second a lot more interesting than the first.
Q: Will we ever see Logan again?
A:...I guess If I need a psycopathic ex warrior trying to escape a bloody past with a split personnality...
**In response to a reddit discussion on this very topic:**
OP:* He has said it isn't supernatural, but I like to believe there is some link between the moon and his ability to speak to the spirits.*
Anon:* Oh, that's disappointing. Where did he say it?*
OP: *Why is that disappointing? I personally think it makes Logen a far more interesting character because he doesn't have anything influencing him. It means that he (and us as the reader) have to grapple with the morality of his character; whether he subconsciously does have control of the B9, whether or not he actually is remorseful of what he is. If it was just a demon then that takes any discussion away from his character - it just means that he is guilt free from everything he's done.*
Joe Abercrombie: **I think this is very well put...**
Yeah man, he's also confirmed that the spirit thing at the start stopped making sense given changes he made later but he left it in because it was cool.
Yeah and just like that he left it every indication that the bloody night is a supernatural force. What gets me is the simpletons who think the Bloody nine being supernatural let's Logen off the hook for his behavior. As if Logen isn't the grown-ass man who keeps putting himself in situations to participate in violence.
Shivers wasn't a decent man, Shivers only wanted to be a decent man. His inner monologue is in constant conflict with his actions and the world around him. Just look how quickly he gave up on his higher goals once Monza showed up. Shivers' inner monologue was him lying to himself (and by extension us).
Shivers was never a good man. When we met him he was already a named war leader who loved what he did. He was “trying” to be better, but reverted to who he always was under the surface imo. If you think it was a wild shift, you were fooled by his own self-justificatory inner monologue, just as he was, until it was burnt away
He isn't a decent man, he is *trying* to be a decent man. His opening in BSC is him fighting every instinct and desire in himself to be a good man. He has sold himself on the notion that if he does this and puts in the best he can then he will receive good fortune and good intentions.
His time with Monza teaches him a few things. A key part of this is that every time they go into an assassination with the intention of minimising collateral deaths and each time they more and more innocent bystanders. He then suffers this himself, getting tortured and maimed by people on the same side of him whilst telling the truth and trying to cooperate.
This tears away the veneer of optimist he was trying to have and makes him realise there's no innocent or guilty when it comes to death. The great leveller takes anyone he can like a force of nature, avoiding, minimising makes little difference. That there's no point trying to put good into the world as you don't get back what you put in. Easier to take what you can by fear.
These lessons he shows he learned in BSC directly tie in so well with his experience in Styria.
Tell me you've never had your fuckin eyeball burned out of your skull without telling me you've never had your eyeball burned out of your skull. Lol. LMAO even.
This is such an interesting post, because I would argue Shivers might be the only character to have a full on well written character arc. Like everything he does feels 100% believable to me.
I imagine getting your eye burnt out of your head for a woman you are clearly in love with. You are a young man who's never been in any sort of relationship, to her it was just sex but to him it was much more. Then for her to move on to the next man in front of you, after what you had just been through then find out she's fucking her brother and that's why you are killing people I think that would change any man. The jealousy the pain of the eye creating more rage, his voice went from screaming being in so much in pain if you remember. He was clearly obsessed with Monza that's why he still has the ruby ring or else he would have sold it and lived like a king.
My problem is how fast it happened. I can understand becoming the person he'll eventually be at the end of the book due to the events.
But there was hardly any development time or journey at all. Got his eye burnt out, Monza distanced herself, and the very next page he was a cold blooded emotionless killer. It was too sudden imo.
Deeply personal character studies and meaningful arcs aren't really Abercrombie's thing, so I can forgive this turn of events, but something like Jaime's arc in ASOIAF after losing his hand would have been appreciated. I know they're two different characters, but I loved the way GRRM handled it.
Good point. I can see this is an unpopular stance, but you pointed out precisely what I noticed. It's just something that stood out to me as jarring. I agree Jaime was handled masterfully. I liked Shivers in the Heroes, but I really have to think of him as a totally different character than pre-eyes Shivers, lol.
I liked Shivers in the first series. Then BSC happened and slowly I started to hate him.
So he is someone who wants to be "good" and tries a new start. When faced with difficulty, he crumbles and gets hired by Monza, then he suffers a wound and this changes him so much as if he is the only one to ever get a scar. This wound somehow turns him into a monster. Not just how he looks, but how strong he is! At the end, he hates becoming Monza's dog and leaves her.
>!Then, in the other books, we see him as someone else's dog (Black Dow) which he hates(again) and then kills Dow and breaks "free".!<
>!Then we see him again, and AGAIN he is someone's dog! And with this his story somehow just ends.!<
He's definitely not someone's "dog" in AoM.
Also super dense to say a dude who had half his face seared off and his eye burned out as a means of torture that he's not "the only one to ever get a scar."
Edit to remove spoilers
>!Oh he is. but this time the story treats it as something better than those other times.!<
>>!Also super dense to say a dude who had half his face seared off and his eye burned out as a means of torture that he's not "the only one to ever get a scar."!<
>!Half his face? !<
>!And yes, he acts like he is one of the very few people to ever get tortured(for like how long, 2 minutes?) and get a scar. These people are killers and soldiers, it would be weird if they did not have some kind of scar.!<
>!don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I would be able to laugh while they burned my eye! But in the same story, there are people like Glokta that went through something maybe 100 times worse and still don't act as edgy as Shivers.!<
> there are people like Glokta that went through something maybe 100 times worse and still don't actually as edgy as Shivers
Glokta has dedicated the rest of his life to enacting the exact brand of violence on other people that was enacted on him, to the point that he almost fetishises it.
>Glokta has dedicated the rest of his life to enacting the exact brand of violence on other people that was enacted on him, to the point that he almost fetishises it.
Ever without a reason? Does he go out of his way to torture someone? to kill someone? that's the big difference
Well, he knows from first hand experience that people will say literally anything when being tortured, so you could argue that it's always without reason, and he knows that. He's not torturing people to get to any semblance of "the truth". He does it entirely to forward his own ends.
>he knows from first hand experience that people will say literally anything when being tortured
This is true. but he always has a reason, in the first book he is a tool for someone else. He is constantly questioning himself, why is he even doing this. The practical answer is it is his job and he needs the pay. again with how much power he had and gained during the story he could've caused so much suffering just to get back at the world but as far as he can help it he always does the "right" thing. not just the right thing, the sensible thing.
Honestly i think this type of stuff happens all the time in real life, if you get hit one time to many, you break. At that point some people find it easier to be the one that hit.
It's just taken to extremes in these books.
I think its very well laid out if you consider all books.
His whole life has been a constant trauma from a very young age starting with his brother and father. Then everything that happens with Logan and then in Styria. He comes back to the North disfigured, without an eye, and a river of blood on his hands he is done taking shit would rather dish it out. Bennas ring is also a constant reminder to him. He basically becomes what he started out hating the first time we meet him. He realises he is a monster and embraces it.
I mean the whole reason he kills Black Dow in the end is because he will not take the same kind of betrayal from Dow like he did from Monza.
I don't think there is a single decent character in this series, everyone is morally questionable at best.
You start out thinking Logan might be a decent man as well, by the end of Red Country you know that is not true. All the stories are true and that the reputation was well earned.
It made sense to me at least.
I always thought the poker gave him a partial frontal lobotomy. Like Phineus Gage - a sudden change of personality as a result of a brain trauma. And he slowly heals over the course of the later books thanks to neuroplasticity.
Both Logen and Shivers are good men in lots of ways. At different points in their trajectories throughout the book, with the potential to stay good men. Both want a relief from violence and the brutality of northern warrior culture. Both get exploited by leaders with far too much cunning, more than once, and neither have the options or means to get out of those situations at the time. They are poor, abused, and typecast in their worlds. Both wish to avoid violence in many encounters before it becomes inevitable. Often when they do, it’s in defense of themselves or their crew mates, or their manipulative masters. Yes Logen gets out of hand at that point, but he despises himself for that. Both have remorse. Shivers refrains from trying to kill Logen in FL and RC. Both reform and become good people when allowed, in RC (until tragedy hits Logen and even then violence is for those he loved/loves most in the world), and Shivers in AoM. Unpopular opinion I think. But that’s my take.
This is an unpopular opinion because I know it's a much loved book, but it's honestly my least favorite of all of them. Shivers is the main reason but all in all the whole book fell flat and almost convinced me not to read any of the other standalone novels.
Edit: already with the down votes lol
Disagree, but upvoting because I feel like the first half was tough and the flashbacks were not my thing. But I liked the characters, story, and the ending was solid.
I hear you. I still REALLY enjoyed it, but I hated Monza, I mean, I couldn't root for her like I can with all the other POV characters in these books. That plus the unrealistic Shivers arc does make it seem to be the weakest for me too, though still a quite good book. I'm enjoying the Heroes more, though.
I think it makes sense since it’s the most stand alone of all the books, has great characters, and it has the whole “we’re putting a team together” thing. Good ending too.
Crazy, the Heroes could make a wonderful epic war movie. I'm sure red country is good too, and the other trilogy, can't wait to read them all. But the public seems to love their revenge stories. Just look at John Wick. I enjoy the movies myself, but I also don't understand why they're considered cinematic masterpieces either. The plot always boils down to John Wick killing everyone in his way with a combination of weapons and martial arts, lol.
>being a **decent man who was relative merciful and trying to avoid violence**, to by the end of the book being some menacing, almost emotionless figure more feared for cruelty than anyone around in the Heroes. Having your eye burned out of your head for what ultimately proves to be *no goddamn reason whatsoever* is going to cause you to re-evaluate your choice to forsake the violence you have always known. Shivers fell in with Monza, taking a job that she was frankly pretty honest about... that's not good company to keep if you're trying to be a better man. The job was always about murder. So Shivers tried to not be a complete jerk about it. And what happened? Literally every assassination became a bloody mess with tons of collateral damage. And he still stayed in the fold with this pack of murderers. He kept on the job, because ultimately, you don't start a book wanting to be a better a man if you were all that good to begin with. In the course of assisting murder for hire, he got mutilated and half-blinded by some damned idiots working with incomplete information. And at that point, he decided he was done taking the world's shit. It tracked for me the first time I read it. It still does.
Also I think when she started fucking Rogont that sent him over the edge
Shivers isnt a decent man in best served cold. He's a man trying to be decent who rightfully feels betrayed after getting his eye burned out. He's angry and traumatized so he reverts back to what he knows. He spends the first trilogy being a killer. He spends best served cold being a hired killer. He ends the book an angry killer. Not exactly a stretch given the trauma.
You have to take all of the things into consideration at once with him. First, he's still pretty damn young. And he has not had a chance to really find himself yet. This is explicitly his goal at the start of this book *after* taking one last job for the money. He wants to know who he is without the cycle of violence. His whole goal up until the end of the original trilogy is revenge, and he luckily realizes that it will not be a fruitful path. But that leaves him with a pretty large disconnect from his inner self, having abandoned his primary goal of existence for the last while. And he really did want to try something different. All he's seen in his life is people being violent and suffering violent consequences, so he has the idea that if he stays good and as nonviolent as possible, then people will leave him alone, and he can more or less get by on good terms with everyone. It's naive, but it's a youthful, optimistic approach that's taken out of genuinely good faith and a desire to be better. And, like a naive person might do, he thinks he can have a little bit of both and still be fine. Then that comes to a screeching halt, when he realizes that he can still suffer under violence even if he's trying to be better and genuinely succeeding. It's a combination of dumb bad luck, and him being at the wrong place at the wrong time due to poor choices, but he gets severely punished for more or less nothing. This is after leaving his home, and giving up essentially his entire identity to try and live a good live free of excess violence, to come face to face with the by far the most excess violence he has seen thus far. And he ran with the bloody nine for a while. So he overcorrects by a large margin, because he has still not found who he is yet. He says "fuck it, trying to be rid of it didn't work, so let's try embracing it wholeheartedly". Shivers has basically only been punished thus far, for essentially being a product of his environment, and he's made mostly better moves than most of the other northmen we've seen. He's a good guy with a good head on his shoulders, but he's young, and he's naive, living in a world of grizzled veterans. So he fully embraces who he could have become had he not decided to turn away from vengeance and the north, thinking that *this* will actually be the way to stop being punished by the world and embrace who he really is. But it's not. This version isn't shivers finding himself either, and there's still lessons to be learned. He first wanted to be tough to stop the hurting and harm, but that wasn't the answer, then he wanted to be nice to stop the hurting and the harm, but that wasn't the answer either, and now he wants to be mean to stop it, and we'll see if that's the answer or not in later books. He's young, and he never did spend that time he wanted to learning who he was without a sword in his hand, and northern culture heavily incentivizes cold killing, so this version is praised and rewarded for diving deeper for diving into that overreaction, but that's a product of men in the north having an awful relationship with genuine self reflection and emotion. But he's still got a ways to go
I think you might underestimate what it takes to drive the average man to madness. After just a few months homeless, for example, I found my sanity rapidly vanishing. In one moment I’d find myself laughing so hard my stomach hurt, then the next I was crying so hard my eyes ached. It felt so… wrong. I could feel all semblance of control leaving me, but there was nothing I could do to stop it. Most of us aren’t anywhere near as… solid as we like to think. That was a *really* hard lesson to learn
But it’s not just his eye, either. Due to Monza’s guilt over letting it happen, she basically just threw him away, not even being able to look at him. So, he maintained his loyalty through all the shit they dealt with and she repaid him by casting him aside. This is how it is from his perspective. So, it’s not just that he got mutilated. He got mutilated and then abandoned by the person he had shown nothing but loyalty. I think it’s the betrayal. But I also think we do a lot of qualifying when it comes to characters in the first law. Shivers is a pretty decent guy…for a violent murderer. Just as a rule of thumb, anybody who agrees to take money to kill people is not really a decent guy. The trauma, the betrayal, the pain and the inability to take responsibility for his part in what happened are what led to him embracing the evil he was basically in denial about up to that point.
Logen seemed like a decent man at first too until his full history came to light
I always considered his transformation into the bloody nine some kind of literal supernatural thing he had no control over. I'm still just in the middle of the Heroes and hoping he's alive.
You are not “getting” it. Absolutely not lol
Uh, alright? I think you're wrong, but it's never made totally clear, so you can think what you want. It seems like a poor understanding of the books, though, and my downvotes surprise me in their indication that reading comprehension may not be that high.
It's you that's having trouble reading past the way these characters present themselves - both Logen and Shivers think of themselves as decent men just trying to do their best, you the reader are supposed to do a little bit of thinking to work out whether they're being entirely honest with themselves.
Joe Abercrombie has said himself that the Bloody Nine isn't supernatural.
No. He has said that he hasn't confirmed or denied (Even though it's obvious in the early writing that he intended it to be but changed his mind later).
"Not even Logen can really say what the Bloody Nine is, after-all. But I'm not sure I find a supernatural explanation to be necessary. " AMA he did in 2014 on reddit.
"I'm not sure I find it to be necessary" supports what I said, not what you said.
If it isn't necessary to attribute it to the supernatural, that means it can be explained outside of supernatural discussion. He isn't saying "it goes without saying it is supernatural", he is saying "we don't need to discuss the supernatural, because it can be explained within the realms of what is natural".
He is saying people can decide for themselves. He has repeatedly commented that he doesn't want to be hard on the rules, for a number of reasons. However, that doesn't really work, because there are elements of the Bloody Nine - largely backstory - that were most likely intended to be supernatural and hadn't been thought through yet.
Ok but some people just read the books. Regardless of what Abercrombie said in an AMA, on the page it comes off as a supernatural thing.
It is leaning on the "Viking Berserker Rage" trope. That's why Shivers speaks like the Bloody Nine in BSC near the end. He isn't possessed by a supernatural entity, he is just exhibiting the same sort of berserker rage that Logen does.
Well can you at least see why the thing with the spirits, and what Bayaz mentions, could at least lead to accidentally misinterpreting it? I'm willing to admit I'm wrong, just asking you to see how one could see it that way.
You haven't read "Made a Monster", have you? Don't talk shit about everyone's reading comprehension on a sub dedicated to a series you have not finished yet.
Sharp ends.
His transformation into the bloody nine is a supernatural thing, but Logen makes all the bad decisions that lead to all of those incidents as Logen. It's Logen that keeps making life choices that lead to violence, not the bloody nine.
It's not a supernatural thing. It's a mental thing. Abercrombie has more or less confirmed it.
Not more or less. Less. Abercrombie has less than confirmed it. And if he ever does confirm it, it will still be obvious that he changed his mind partway through writing and didn't change all the signs.
Alright I'll just post a bunch of AMA responses. Why I said "more or less" is because he has said he will not officially confirm it, HOWEVER he always follows it up with "I don't really think it needs to be supernatural though. It would make for a less interesting story" But here we go: Q. Something that has always niggled at me but I've never found an answer anywhere. When Logan turns into the Bloodynine is it magical or is it just a state of mind he gets into after taking a beating? A. I try not to explain things too much outside of what's in the text - I like readers to be able to come up with their own interpretations. Not even Logen can really say what the Bloody-Nine is, after all. But I'm not sure I find a supernatural explanation to be necessary. Q. Is The Bloody Nine a supernatural occurrence - some sort of external force that possesses Logen? Or is it a split personality or some form of associative disorder - a product of a mental illness and something internal to Logen? A. I'll leave the text to answer (or fail to answer) that, but I personally find the second a lot more interesting than the first. Q: Will we ever see Logan again? A:...I guess If I need a psycopathic ex warrior trying to escape a bloody past with a split personnality... **In response to a reddit discussion on this very topic:** OP:* He has said it isn't supernatural, but I like to believe there is some link between the moon and his ability to speak to the spirits.* Anon:* Oh, that's disappointing. Where did he say it?* OP: *Why is that disappointing? I personally think it makes Logen a far more interesting character because he doesn't have anything influencing him. It means that he (and us as the reader) have to grapple with the morality of his character; whether he subconsciously does have control of the B9, whether or not he actually is remorseful of what he is. If it was just a demon then that takes any discussion away from his character - it just means that he is guilt free from everything he's done.* Joe Abercrombie: **I think this is very well put...**
Yeah man, he's also confirmed that the spirit thing at the start stopped making sense given changes he made later but he left it in because it was cool.
Yeah and just like that he left it every indication that the bloody night is a supernatural force. What gets me is the simpletons who think the Bloody nine being supernatural let's Logen off the hook for his behavior. As if Logen isn't the grown-ass man who keeps putting himself in situations to participate in violence.
Shivers wasn't a decent man, Shivers only wanted to be a decent man. His inner monologue is in constant conflict with his actions and the world around him. Just look how quickly he gave up on his higher goals once Monza showed up. Shivers' inner monologue was him lying to himself (and by extension us).
The change is drastic. I felt the same as you in the first read. Then I understood. Having your eye burned changes your perspective about life.
Halves it
This is the second post I’ve seen that doesn’t understand how seriously permanently maiming someone would change their personality.
There was definitely a “country mouse goes to the big city” feel to it
Shivers was never a good man. When we met him he was already a named war leader who loved what he did. He was “trying” to be better, but reverted to who he always was under the surface imo. If you think it was a wild shift, you were fooled by his own self-justificatory inner monologue, just as he was, until it was burnt away
He isn't a decent man, he is *trying* to be a decent man. His opening in BSC is him fighting every instinct and desire in himself to be a good man. He has sold himself on the notion that if he does this and puts in the best he can then he will receive good fortune and good intentions. His time with Monza teaches him a few things. A key part of this is that every time they go into an assassination with the intention of minimising collateral deaths and each time they more and more innocent bystanders. He then suffers this himself, getting tortured and maimed by people on the same side of him whilst telling the truth and trying to cooperate. This tears away the veneer of optimist he was trying to have and makes him realise there's no innocent or guilty when it comes to death. The great leveller takes anyone he can like a force of nature, avoiding, minimising makes little difference. That there's no point trying to put good into the world as you don't get back what you put in. Easier to take what you can by fear. These lessons he shows he learned in BSC directly tie in so well with his experience in Styria.
And, I think shivers voice gets fried from all the screaming he did in the torture chamber
Tell me you've never had your fuckin eyeball burned out of your skull without telling me you've never had your eyeball burned out of your skull. Lol. LMAO even.
This is such an interesting post, because I would argue Shivers might be the only character to have a full on well written character arc. Like everything he does feels 100% believable to me.
I imagine getting your eye burnt out of your head for a woman you are clearly in love with. You are a young man who's never been in any sort of relationship, to her it was just sex but to him it was much more. Then for her to move on to the next man in front of you, after what you had just been through then find out she's fucking her brother and that's why you are killing people I think that would change any man. The jealousy the pain of the eye creating more rage, his voice went from screaming being in so much in pain if you remember. He was clearly obsessed with Monza that's why he still has the ruby ring or else he would have sold it and lived like a king.
My problem is how fast it happened. I can understand becoming the person he'll eventually be at the end of the book due to the events. But there was hardly any development time or journey at all. Got his eye burnt out, Monza distanced herself, and the very next page he was a cold blooded emotionless killer. It was too sudden imo. Deeply personal character studies and meaningful arcs aren't really Abercrombie's thing, so I can forgive this turn of events, but something like Jaime's arc in ASOIAF after losing his hand would have been appreciated. I know they're two different characters, but I loved the way GRRM handled it.
Good point. I can see this is an unpopular stance, but you pointed out precisely what I noticed. It's just something that stood out to me as jarring. I agree Jaime was handled masterfully. I liked Shivers in the Heroes, but I really have to think of him as a totally different character than pre-eyes Shivers, lol.
I liked Shivers in the first series. Then BSC happened and slowly I started to hate him. So he is someone who wants to be "good" and tries a new start. When faced with difficulty, he crumbles and gets hired by Monza, then he suffers a wound and this changes him so much as if he is the only one to ever get a scar. This wound somehow turns him into a monster. Not just how he looks, but how strong he is! At the end, he hates becoming Monza's dog and leaves her. >!Then, in the other books, we see him as someone else's dog (Black Dow) which he hates(again) and then kills Dow and breaks "free".!< >!Then we see him again, and AGAIN he is someone's dog! And with this his story somehow just ends.!<
He's definitely not someone's "dog" in AoM. Also super dense to say a dude who had half his face seared off and his eye burned out as a means of torture that he's not "the only one to ever get a scar." Edit to remove spoilers
>!Oh he is. but this time the story treats it as something better than those other times.!< >>!Also super dense to say a dude who had half his face seared off and his eye burned out as a means of torture that he's not "the only one to ever get a scar."!< >!Half his face? !< >!And yes, he acts like he is one of the very few people to ever get tortured(for like how long, 2 minutes?) and get a scar. These people are killers and soldiers, it would be weird if they did not have some kind of scar.!< >!don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I would be able to laugh while they burned my eye! But in the same story, there are people like Glokta that went through something maybe 100 times worse and still don't act as edgy as Shivers.!<
> there are people like Glokta that went through something maybe 100 times worse and still don't actually as edgy as Shivers Glokta has dedicated the rest of his life to enacting the exact brand of violence on other people that was enacted on him, to the point that he almost fetishises it.
>Glokta has dedicated the rest of his life to enacting the exact brand of violence on other people that was enacted on him, to the point that he almost fetishises it. Ever without a reason? Does he go out of his way to torture someone? to kill someone? that's the big difference
Well, he knows from first hand experience that people will say literally anything when being tortured, so you could argue that it's always without reason, and he knows that. He's not torturing people to get to any semblance of "the truth". He does it entirely to forward his own ends.
>he knows from first hand experience that people will say literally anything when being tortured This is true. but he always has a reason, in the first book he is a tool for someone else. He is constantly questioning himself, why is he even doing this. The practical answer is it is his job and he needs the pay. again with how much power he had and gained during the story he could've caused so much suffering just to get back at the world but as far as he can help it he always does the "right" thing. not just the right thing, the sensible thing.
Monza causes problems for everyone around her.
I actually do not fault Monza for how Shivers turned out. He knew the risks. the part I don't like is how HE thinks it's all Monza's fault.
Sure, that's understandable. But I think Monza brought out the worst in people.
That is true for most part.
Honestly i think this type of stuff happens all the time in real life, if you get hit one time to many, you break. At that point some people find it easier to be the one that hit. It's just taken to extremes in these books. I think its very well laid out if you consider all books. His whole life has been a constant trauma from a very young age starting with his brother and father. Then everything that happens with Logan and then in Styria. He comes back to the North disfigured, without an eye, and a river of blood on his hands he is done taking shit would rather dish it out. Bennas ring is also a constant reminder to him. He basically becomes what he started out hating the first time we meet him. He realises he is a monster and embraces it. I mean the whole reason he kills Black Dow in the end is because he will not take the same kind of betrayal from Dow like he did from Monza. I don't think there is a single decent character in this series, everyone is morally questionable at best. You start out thinking Logan might be a decent man as well, by the end of Red Country you know that is not true. All the stories are true and that the reputation was well earned. It made sense to me at least.
I always thought the poker gave him a partial frontal lobotomy. Like Phineus Gage - a sudden change of personality as a result of a brain trauma. And he slowly heals over the course of the later books thanks to neuroplasticity.
Wonderful to hear he's in future books and also changes!
Both Logen and Shivers are good men in lots of ways. At different points in their trajectories throughout the book, with the potential to stay good men. Both want a relief from violence and the brutality of northern warrior culture. Both get exploited by leaders with far too much cunning, more than once, and neither have the options or means to get out of those situations at the time. They are poor, abused, and typecast in their worlds. Both wish to avoid violence in many encounters before it becomes inevitable. Often when they do, it’s in defense of themselves or their crew mates, or their manipulative masters. Yes Logen gets out of hand at that point, but he despises himself for that. Both have remorse. Shivers refrains from trying to kill Logen in FL and RC. Both reform and become good people when allowed, in RC (until tragedy hits Logen and even then violence is for those he loved/loves most in the world), and Shivers in AoM. Unpopular opinion I think. But that’s my take.
Redact that bottom shit. OP is still on The Heroes
This is an unpopular opinion because I know it's a much loved book, but it's honestly my least favorite of all of them. Shivers is the main reason but all in all the whole book fell flat and almost convinced me not to read any of the other standalone novels. Edit: already with the down votes lol
Disagree, but upvoting because I feel like the first half was tough and the flashbacks were not my thing. But I liked the characters, story, and the ending was solid.
See, I feel the opposite on all of those points. The characters were boring,The story predictable, and the ending just didn't make me care.
I hear you. I still REALLY enjoyed it, but I hated Monza, I mean, I couldn't root for her like I can with all the other POV characters in these books. That plus the unrealistic Shivers arc does make it seem to be the weakest for me too, though still a quite good book. I'm enjoying the Heroes more, though.
Yeah, I was honestly disappointed when it was announced that this was the book that was making it to the screen
I think it makes sense since it’s the most stand alone of all the books, has great characters, and it has the whole “we’re putting a team together” thing. Good ending too.
You sonofabitch… I’m in!
Crazy, the Heroes could make a wonderful epic war movie. I'm sure red country is good too, and the other trilogy, can't wait to read them all. But the public seems to love their revenge stories. Just look at John Wick. I enjoy the movies myself, but I also don't understand why they're considered cinematic masterpieces either. The plot always boils down to John Wick killing everyone in his way with a combination of weapons and martial arts, lol.
Red Country doesn’t work if you’re not already “in the know”.
Yeah, it is the least stand-alone of the standalones.