'Splatterpunk'

I’ve just finished reading Joe Abercrombie’s “Best served cold”. It seems to have polarised reactions – some enjoyed it, others disliked it, and I have to say I enjoyed reading it from the plot level at least, as a different sword-and-sorcery adventure. It wasn’t your normal, predictable quest novel. The realistic unpredictability meant that it was almost impossible to determine what would eventually happen, and kept you turning the pages.

Springtime in Styria. And that means war.
There have been nineteen years of blood. The ruthless Grand Duke Orso is locked in a vicious struggle with the squabbling League of Eight, and between them they have bled the land white. Armies march, heads roll and cities burn, while behind the scenes bankers, priests and older, darker powers play a deadly game to choose who will be king.
War may be hell but for Monza Murcatto, the Snake of Talins, the most feared and famous mercenary in Duke Orso's employ, it's a damn good way of making money too. Her victories have made her popular - a shade too popular for her employer's taste. Betrayed and left for dead, Murcatto's reward is a broken body and a burning hunger for vengeance. Whatever the cost, seven men must die
Her allies include Styria's least reliable drunkard, Styria's most treacherous poisoner, a mass-murderer obsessed with numbers and a Northman who just wants to do the right thing. Her enemies number the better half of the nation. And that's all before the most dangerous man in the world is dispatched to hunt her down and finish the job Duke Orso started...
Springtime in Styria. And that means revenge.

Recovering from her horrendously massive injuries and mourning her murdered brother Benna, mercenary Monza Murcatto, vows vengeance on Orso and his six inner circle accomplices. Employing her own motley crew of soldiers and murderers, she crisscrosses the country to get her revenge, but it's neither simple nor satisfying; each target requires fresh strategy, and each death has unexpected effects, and inevitably, the death toll increases exponentially.
It is a bloody and relentless epic of vengeance and obsession with one cold-blooded killing following another, in the mounting wanton carnage. Here the battles are vivid and visceral, the action brutal, some-one labeled it reminiscent of Fritz Leiber - “a kind of splatterpunk sword 'n sorcery”

The pace is headlong as the narrative twists and turns - the betrayals, reversals, and plot twists keep you guessing, working against your expectations. His characters do likewise. They are an ensemble of gritty, anti-heroes, each with a history of betrayal and a moral ambiguity.

Joe Abercrombie writes dark, adult fantasy, and has the will and the cruelty to actually maim and kill off his characters. "Best served cold" is the new standalone novel set in Styria the blood-drenched world of the "First Law Trilogy" (which I haven’t read).