All set on getting something for nothing.'Īll struck with a madness of hope. Wist sucked a noisy mouthful from his bottle. It might've been quite the colourful spectacle if everywhere the blown dust hadn't leached each tone to that same grey ubiquity of dirt. Men, women and children of all races and stations did plenty of their own honking and bellowing too, in every language and temper. Wagon-wheels clattered, mules nickered and horses neighed, livestock honked and oxen bellowed. One-way traffic, headed west towards imagined riches, some charging through fast as the clutter would allow, some stopping off to add their own share of commerce and chaos. Now Squaredeal was bursting at its ragged seams with bold pioneers. A lot can change with a few months and a gold find. You could've spent some days in town and not seen two people. Last summer you could've spent all day in town and not seen two people you didn't know. 'I came here to get away from people,' said Wist. Shy perched on the sacks in her wagon and Wist on the fence, where he always seemed to be, like he'd such a splinter in his arse he'd got stuck there. They sat in front of Stupfer's Meat House, which might've sounded like a brothel but was actually the worst place to eat within fifty miles, and that with some fierce competition.

'Gold.' Wist made the word sound like a mystery there was no solving. This novel also represents the return of Logen Ninefingers, one of Abercrombie’s most beloved characters. Red Country takes place in the same world as the First Law trilogy, Best Served Cold, and The Heroes. Even worse, it will force them into an alliance with Nicomo Cosca, infamous soldier of fortune, and his feckless lawyer Temple, two men no one should ever have to trust. Their journey will take them across the barren plains to a frontier town gripped by gold fever, through feud, duel and massacre, high into the unmapped mountains to a reckoning with the Ghosts. And out in the lawless Far Country the past never stays buried. But it turns out Lamb’s buried a bloody past of his own. She sets off in pursuit with only a pair of oxen and her cowardly old step father Lamb for company.

Shy South hoped to bury her bloody past and ride away smiling, but she’ll have to sharpen up some bad old ways to get her family back, and she’s not a woman to flinch from what needs doing.

Red country joe