How badly did I want to read The Grey Bastards?

On the surface, it ticks a bunch of tickyboxes that make something a telophase book:

[X] set in a pseudo-European, pseudo-medieval fantasy world
[x] down-and-dirty characters caught up in situations beyond their control
[x] orcs! and half-orcs! as viewpoint characters!
[x] and speaking of which, just one viewpoint character instead of a giant cast of thousands
[x] "Grey" spelled as "Grey" and not "Gray" which is just wrong
[x] OH COME ON LOOK AT THIS COVER:

YEAH THAT'S A telophase COVER RIGHT THERE
NO, I DIDN'T DO IT BUT YOU GIVE ME THAT COVER AND I WILL ABSOLUTELY PICK IT UP AND READ THE BACK
ON AN UNRELATED NOTE IT IS A CRYING SHAME THAT A NUMBER OF WARHAMMER4OK NOVELS HAVE SUCH AWESOME COVERS BECAUSE THERE'S NO WAY I'M READING ALL SIXTY THOUSAND OF THEM


ANYway. A couple of weeks ago, I was reminded that The Grey Bastards was coming out on the 19th, and was consumed with futile book-lust, knowing that I had time to read it now, but wasn't sure about then. (Plus that whole ADHD lack of impulse control thing.) And then I remembered Netgalley! That place where librarians, of which I am one, book bloggers, and other book-reading professionals can go request ARCs of books! And yes! it was on there! I put in my request and within a few days had an ARC sitting on my kindle.

So how badly did I want to read it? Well, I'm also a member of a site run by Penguin called FirstToRead, where you can log in and spend points (that you earn by logging in) to guarantee reading copies of pre-release books or enter a lottery to win a chance to read a pre-release book, and a couple of days ago I logged in to discover that I'd spent 500 hard-earned points on another ARC of The Grey Bastards that was ready for me to read. Oops. :)

Apparently I wanted to read it TWO ARCS BADLY, that's how much. Ah well, I'm happy for the Netgalley copy because the FirstToRead copies are epubs and I'd be stuck reading it on my ipad (although I think they were supposed to send me an email that it was ready and I never got it).

You don't actually care about any of that, though. You want to know about the book if you've got this far and didn't quit reading at the pseudo-European, pseudo-medieval tickybox above. I categorize this book with ones like Glen Cook's Black Company series, which is one of my all-time favorite series. I don't think French has reached Cook's heights, but I still read the hell out of the book.

Now the part that I'm not that great at when reviewing: talking about the plot and whatnot. Our protagonist is the half-orc Jackal. He is a member of the Grey Bastards, one of several fighting half-orc brotherhoods living in the wasteland outside of a human kingdom, serving as the thin grey line between the humans and rampaging orc tribes. Jackal gets thrown into the depths of conspiracy and conundrums when a human shoots his mouth off and gets himself killed by one of the Bastards, and they have to cover it up. The situation starts bad, gets worse, and Jackal ends up dragged halfway to hell and back before it's all over.

So much for plot--go read the description on the book cover or one of the many reviews if you want more. What I really liked about it started with Jackal--he's a tough guy with a heart, and I enjoyed spending time in his head. The worldbuilding also does things I like--take a sort of familiar place (Fantasylandia) and puts little twists here and there, building it out into something not quite typical, but retaining enough of what it started from to be mostly familiar.

The Amazon copy mentions "a generous nod to Sons of Anarchy," and, well, never having seen any episodes I couldn't tell you if it's SoA AU fanfic with the serial numbers rubbed off, but the half-orc brotherhoods are based on motorcycle clubs/gangs OH COME ON YOU HAVE TO FACE IT THEY RIDE HOGS. They are of course your basic fictional clubs/gangs in that they're polished and prettified up and aren't necessarily doing things like running drugs. Rape exists in the world--half-orcs are all products of rape--but it happens offscreen, even though various parts of the plot hinge on the consequences of it.

(See, you various "But medieval times were GRITTY and you have to show it by having lots of rapey rape!" people? You can incorporate it without having it onscreen.)

I also note that I have been on the internet too long because when the Amazon copy called it raunchy, I was expecting way more raunch than what I got, which doesn't even match the worst of the Game of Thrones TV show (I never read the books). I also do covers for romance novels, and those get way more explicit than the sex that happens in this book, which seemed almost tame by comparison. Oh well. Sex happens in the book, characters talk about it and make ribald comments to each other, but it's never exploitative--it fits with the characters and their lives.

I don't really have much coherent to say about it--I never do, which is why I'm more of an artist than a writer--other than this is going up on my virtual shelf near the Black Company books* and Paul S. Kemp's Egil and Nix series**. (Please feel free to rec me other books you think might fit, although not Malazan because I would love to read Malazan and have tried several times but there are TOO DAMN MANY PEOPLE TO FOLLOW. The Black Company sticks with 1 or 2 POV characters per book, which is fine by me.)

* THERE'S A NEW ONE COMING OUT THIS FALL YES I PRE-ORDERED THE INSTANT I FOUND OUT
** I keep meaning to talk about them here and never do. I would describe it as Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser minus the Mouser's unsavory predilection for rather young women.

One last ANYWAY and I shall soon be done. I gather from the internet that French self-published TGB before it got picked up by Crown for traditional release, in case you are scratching your head going "I'm sure I've seen this before..."

If you can't tell, I rather enjoyed the book, and if there's going to be a sequel, I'll grab it. My only major side-eye about it is a plot spoiler, so I'll just say that one character exits offscreen in a rather anti-climactic way that I feel doesn't serve them well, but I reserve judgement on that until we see if they show back up in a sequel or not.

Two thumbs up, check 'er out. Get your copy at Amazon starting Tuesday.