The True Bastards

We return to the world of the Lot Lands over a years after the events of The Grey Bastards, this time with Fetching taking the helm both as narrator and as hoof chief. Unfortunately, things aren’t looking too good for the True Bastards. Their hoof is down to under ten blooded riders, their fortress at the Kiln remains a burning heap after the events of Grey Bastards, and there’s a famine gripping their entire lot, with human and half-orc alike putting new holes in their belts. Not a good start for our favourite band of orc-bashing reprobates. 

Straight from the get-go we are throw back into the visceral, gritty, and utterly wonderful language that French infuses his characters with. The Bastards are hard talking, hard fighting, just all around hard beasts, and Fetching might just be the hardest. As we learned in Grey Bastards, Fetch is the first female half-orc to be admitted to a hoof, and now that she’s actually leading one, life hasn’t gotten any simpler. We as listeners/readers know she is a total badass, the members of her hoof know she is a total badass, and so that just leaves the rest of the world to have her particular brand of knuckle-flavoured badassery shoved down its throat. Time and time again our leading lady is forced to show that just because she doesn’t have a plump pair of fruits hanging between her legs, doesn’t mean she couldn’t rip yours off and beat you to death with them. Yes, we feel sorry for Fetch having to constantly prove herself to any half-orc outside her own hoof, but it just makes the eventual demonstrations of her awesomeness all the more satisfying. Fetch is an unbelievably well written character. Yes, because of her strengths, but also because of her weaknesses. She isn’t perfect, she makes mistakes, but by the gods she is trying to do the best out of a truly awful situation, and she doesn’t do too bad at all. 

Now, in Grey Bastards we got little more than a whiff of the peoples and cultures beyond the blighted lands of Ulwan-Dulas, and while this book remains within the confines of the Lots, we are treated to a smattering of the larger universe that French has crafted. It’s a series of those tantalisingly fleeting glimpses that leave you salivating to sniff out a little more of this world, exotic appetisers to compliment our hearty main course. And what a main course it is.

No spoilers, but suffice is to say that we are once again treated to a very human series of ordeals. This isn’t one of those ‘the entire fate of the world rests upon our heroes succeeding’ kind of jobies. This is a maelstrom in a microcosm, but when every character we’ve come to give a crap about resides within that microcosm, you tend to give a good god damn. There are a couple of moments in the story where everything just lines up perfectly, moments when you think you knew which way the winds were blowing only to be thrown a curveball that, on reflection, was wonderfully foreshadowed. French has a way of writing that makes you forget about the big picture until you find yourself painted into it, and the story in True Bastards was at least as engrossing as that of Grey Bastards, if not more so.

Gripes? None really. I loved the characters, loved the language, loved that the book didn’t try to be anything more than it was. It absolutely nailed what its sets out to be, which is a blazingly raucous, rivetingly entertaining mad-dash adventure across the land of the lots, helmed by a foul-mouthed queen of arse-kicking with an axe to grind. I didn’t rush to listen to True Bastards on release, but I’m confident that I will do so for Book 3.

As for narration, Lisa Flanagan does a hell of a job giving voice to some of the most macho, misogynistic animals I’ve ever listened to. You can almost feel the spittle flecks bouncing off the tusks. Great performance.

Personal Score: 4.5 stars

Professional Score: 4.25 stars