Spoilers!
In the battle of good versus evil, a 10-year-old girl — who is also the Pope and some believe the Second Coming of the Savior, also a woman — enlists the help of a wayward monk to lead a congregation consisting of a pirate, vampire, werewolf, an invisible elf, a necromancer (sorcerer, or as he prefers, magician), and cursed knight to escort a thief from the Holy City to Troy to take her rightful place upon the Serpent Throne as Empress. That sounds like the set-up for a bizarre bar joke, but in reality, it’s the premise of Joe Abercrombie’s 2025 book, The Devils. The aforementioned “devils” are the Pope Benedicta’s way of not only counteracting evil with devils, but attempting to forge a bond between the Western and Eastern Churches, ruptured by a schism over, oddly enough, women’s prominence in the former. Abercrombie’s book is an uproarious, thrilling, gory-as-hell (pun fully intended), and enticing opening salvo for a new series. A bit long in the tooth, like a werewolf (or vampire, for that matter), owing to the need to world-build and establish these characters, but I still had such a good time journeying with these misfit band of characters and the perils they encountered on the way. The Devils is Abercrombie wondering what it would look like if the Pope had her own Suicide Squad, and it’s glorious.
Brother Diaz is our wayward monk with this wayward congregation of devils to lead; he’s wayward in the sense that he was forced into being a monk by his mother after impregnating a woman, and he pictures what he thinks is the original opportunity as a way to laze around with books. He’s not even much for the theology of it all. The pirate who has had every job and made every connection under the sun is Baptiste, with a reputation for “sticking her neck out.” Baron Rikard is the vampire, beguiling with his words, able to turn into black bats of vapor, and actually enjoys bathing in the sun like an ancient lizard. Vigga is a Viking, who was already murderous and violent prior to being bitten by a werewolf, but when the werewolf comes out, it’s like having, well, a deus ex machina on your side in a fight. She’s bad-ass even without the werewolf coming out, though. In this world, elves are seen as the enemy of God, and in particular, the Church of the East worries about an elf invasion; even so, Sunny is an elf in service to the Pope, who has extraordinary listening abilities owing to her pointy ears, of course, but her main skill is turning invisible whenever she holds her breath. The funniest one of the bunch is the necromancer, Balthazar Sham Ivam Draxi, because he takes himself way too seriously. As mentioned, he not only perpetually corrects people, chagrined, that he is a magician, not a sorcerer, but he also has to say his full name as such. Then there is the curmudgeon Jakob, the cursed knight and a curmudgeon because of the curse wherein he is unable to die. A witch cursed him to such a fate. He’s lived hundreds of years and fought the Church’s many crusades. All of these “devils” are bound to do the Pope’s bidding, with the exception of Rikard since he doesn’t have a soul. He does her bidding because it’s fun for him. Bound though he is, Balthazar is arrogant enough to think he can easily break the binding of a 10-year-old girl’s rendering. Instead, hilarity ensues as every time he attempts to, he vomits.
These devils are enlisted to escort Alex, the 17-year-old thief from the Holy City, to Troy. So, in Troy, the story goes that Eudoxia betrayed and killed her sister, Alex’s mother, and took the throne as her own. She then was hell-bent (heh) on defying God’s natural order by locating and harnessing the soul. In so doing, she experimented with a wide array of human-animal breeding. She created abhorrent creatures. Then, she died, leaving the Serpent Throne of Troy open to her four warring sons, even though her brother, Duke Michael of Nicaea, claims that the rightful heiress to the throne is Alex. Only Alex (and then later Sunny, who she confesses to) knows that the real heiress died in the Holy City and Alex merely pretended to be her. Nonetheless, our merry band of devils will encounter three of the brothers as they ferry Alex to Troy.
The first attack, almost before they’re even beyond the boundaries of the Holy City, comes from Duke Marcian, who attacks them with human-animal soldiers; he made them soldiers, but they were never intended as such, so they’re not exactly great soldiers. Still, it’s enough to wound Duke Michael, sending him back home, and causing the devils to unleash the deus ex machina of the Vigga-Wolf to wreck shop. She easily dispatches Duke Marcian. In the melee that ensued, we also were able to see Balthazar in action, animating the dead inn workers’ corpses to his ends. Escaping to Venice, they make a deal with a crime lord to gain passage to Troy, if only they retrieve a mysterious box from a cursed house. Balthazar initially seems like he will help them secure the box, but he’s also secretly trying to break the Pope’s binding again. The latter fails, so he helps them with the former, rescuing the other devils from the illusionist’s torment at the cursed house.
Now on a boat with a course for Troy, the devils are attacked a second time by the second brother, Duke Constans, whose human-animal hybrids are more like sea creature monstrosities. Craftily, Jakob fights Duke Constans in a fight to the death. After all, Jakob can’t die! He kills Constans. The ship sinks in the process, scattering our merry band about an island, where they not only encounter a civil war ongoing (which turns out to be between a quarreling married couple), but encounter the third brother, Sabbas, who also has twin sorceresses and his own werewolf. Oh, and Sabbas is known as the Angel of Troy because HE HAS WINGS. Meanwhile, Balthazar again tries to break the Pope’s binding, this time by summoning the Duke of Hell. Hilariously, she tells him, nah, I can’t do that, which only proves to Balthazar, finally, that the Pope might actually be the Second Coming of the Savior. When the inevitable battle with Sabbas gets down to the nitty gritty, Jakob again tries what he did with Constans, evoking Sabbas’ pride with a challenge to fight to the death. Sabbas goes along for a bit, but when he realizes Jakob can’t die, he’s like, screw this. Thankfully, Balthazar saves the day by opening a literal plague pit that pulls Sabbas down to his death.
When they’re not warring or being attacked, and where the book sometimes gets long in the tooth, we not only get the uproarious interplay between all of them, but also romance, believe it or not. Balthazar clearly has a thing for Baptiste, mainly to prove his worthiness to her. Alex and Sunny also form a romance, which belies Sunny’s preconceived notions of how people view elves. Sunny, by the way, is the unsung hero of the devils, who through invisibility is often saving everyone’s butts, including Alex’s. And most bizarrely on the romance front, Brother Diaz disregards his vows and has sex (four times, he confesses!) with … Vigga! Yes, the werewolf! Amazing.
Finally, the devils make it to Troy, and well, I was skeptical that all would end peachy. Not only because there was still more than 100 pages left in the book, but also because there remained two outstanding elements: a.) the fourth brother, Duke Arcadius; and b.) we know there is a traitor in the Holy City because that’s how Duke Marcian (and the others) found Alex and the devils so quickly. Also, Lady Severa, who greets Alex and the devils and who served as Empress Eudoxia’s lady-in-waiting seemed too good, too nice. And also, still rather admiring of Eudoxia. My prediction was that she either was still in service to her, even after Eudoxia’s death, or because of the soul manipulation attempts, was somehow Eudoxia. It turned out to be the latter, which of course impresses Balthazar. They fight to an admiring stalemate later. As for Duke Arcadius, he shockingly turned out to not be like his brothers and in a bid to stabilize Troy, marries Alex (much to her protestation initially, but then she realizes the political expediency of it). Their, uh, consummation, is interrupted by Alex’s four housemaids, who are actually Eudoxia’s enterprising sorceresses. One of them freezes Duke Arcadius’ body and breaks his body into a thousand pieces. Chaos ensues. (A minor annoyance during this section of the book is that Alex, who up to this point has gritted her way through all manner of ghastly horrors, suddenly becomes very fearful, repeatedly saying, “Oh, God.” I think she said it 30 times! Oof.)
So, the Pope’s binding only applied to the devils to see Alex crowned as Empress of Troy. As soon as the crown was upon her head, the binding them would bring them back to the Holy City. Instead, when they see a clear sign of distress coming from the city, they know Alex is in trouble and return to help her. Well, except for Balthazar, who is initially reluctant. Rikard kills the four handmaids himself, although it takes a lot out of him.
Duke Michael was the bad one all along. He killed, who he thinks, was Alex’s mother and framed Eudoxia, all in a bid to claim the throne as his own. Putting a pitiful “shit thief” like Alex on the throne was just another means to that end. Jakob again saves the day, though, by tackling the Duke through an eternal flame off a very high tower to the raging sea below. The cursed knight survives and is eventually brought out of the depths by two fishermen in their net. Ha.
In the chaos that ensued, the deus ex machina was released and this time, they couldn’t “turn off” the Vigga-Wolf. She eats Baptiste alive, who stuck her neck out one last time. Balthazar is crestfallen, as was I! I’d grown to like Baptiste, and all the devils, for that matter. Again, while I thought the intervening moments could have been shortened, those moments, along with the heroic actions taken therein, endeared me to these devils, most especially (and perhaps most intentionally) Balthazar, the most reluctant do-gooder of them all.
After everything, the book ends with Empress Alex (or Alexia, as her name is supposed to be upon the throne) reluctantly recognizing that the devils must return to the Holy City, owing to their dangerous nature. Only Brother Diaz, who is now Father Diaz, remains behind. So, naturally, the last few pages of the book echo the beginning of the book: a carriage ride in the Holy City, with two new people called upon to replace Diaz and Baptiste.
Overall, Abercrombie truly brought the Holy City and Troy, with its devils, monsters, clergywomen, sorceresses, elves, and everything in between, alive for a thrilling ride through hell. It was sad to have to leave the devils behind once I closed the book, but I look forward to more adventures with them.
