This is kind of a hard review to write, just because I’ve already written it once already, so now I have to try not to repeat myself. Part of me just wants to drop a link here to my review of the first book in the series, The Grey Bastards, and leave it at that. And while I won’t actually be that lazy, I will go ahead and link that first review — check it out here, if you’ve a mind.
Honestly, I’m not sure at first what to say here besides: Did you read The Grey Bastards? Did you like it? Because this is more The Grey Bastards: more sprawling storylines weaving together in unexpected ways; more tough-as-nails, foul-mouthed, badass characters with flexible moral compasses; more unapologetic grit and grime and gut-strewing; more peeks into the nooks and crannies of a unique and beautifully built but cruelly unforgiving world; more sex; more violence; and more robust bacon flavor.
Also, to lift another similarity from the first review, more quick notes worth disclosing. First off, spoilers for the first Bastards book, obviously, so go read that if you haven’t yet before you read this. Second, for the sake of transparency, Jonathan French is still a friend of ours — someone we thanked as a mentor figure in our own debut self-published novel, and someone whose work we’ve been promoting at conventions and on social media and such as Bastards ambassadors (aka “ambastards”). We got advanced reader copies of The True Bastards about a month before the book goes/went on sale to the public, depending on when you’re reading this.
Take all of that into consideration if you want — but also know that, like The Grey Bastards before it, we don’t need no incentives to tell people that this book is damn good. This shit is my jam, and I was gonna read it and love it whether or not the author knows what my face looks like. The fact that I got to do it a month ahead of most other people was just a nice bonus and an incidental early birthday present.
Got all that? Cool, back the fun part.
The True Bastards picks up shortly after where The Grey Bastards left off, this time following Fetch as the new chief of a hoof severely down on its luck. The Bastards’ old fort is destroyed, their numbers depleted, food and security are both scarce, the civilians they look after are living hard, and Fetch herself is suffering from an infection of magical sludge thanks to the climax of the first book — an infection which seems like it’s going to be the death of her in the near future. Soon adding to the hoof’s troubles are the sudden appearance of a pack of highly intelligent, demonic, dog-like beasts; heavily armed cavaleros intent on wiping the badlands clean of half-orc mongrels to bring the area back under Hisparthan control; the arrival of foreign refugees whose allegiances may pit them against the Bastards personally; an unstoppable, unkillable foe more deadly than any the Lots have ever seen; and the specter of a crafty enemy that got away at the end of the previous book, who may or may not be behind all of the above, pulling strings in the shadows just out of reach.
From there, like in the first book, the plot sprawls out in all sorts of directions, conflicts and events occurring organically but oftentimes seemingly unrelated to one another beyond the connecting thread of being damn hard to deal with but exciting to read about. Also like the first book, by the end of this one, almost everything is woven together into a bigger, broader-reaching picture, the details and twists of which I often never saw coming but always felt like I should have after the fact.
Whereas the narrative thrust of The Grey Bastards was Jackal’s growing need to seize the leadership of his gang in order to prevent its destruction, the force driving The True Bastards forward is Fetch’s continuously strained need to maintain leadership and weather all of the hardships that come with it in order to keep the Bastards from slowly, pitifully dying out. It’s the thankless, tiring business that comes after the “happily ever after,” or at least the closest thing to one that can be expected in this setting — you can feel the beaten down exhaustion of Fetch and her comrades throughout the story, and the heightened tension that comes with it every time all hell breaks loose and the Bastards are forced to fight tooth and nail against overwhelming odds.
It’s very nearly grimdark, except for the fact that Fetch is the single baddest of all the asses in Ul-Wundulas and refuses to stay down or be beaten, because she’s got shit to do and people who need her. We see plenty of opportunities where her giving up or leaving everything behind would be tempting, understandable, even preferable — but she persists regardless, with help or alone, through skill or through cleverness or through sheer force of will. The end result is a sort of prolonged raging against the dying of the light, a story that at any turn could have fallen into full-blown sadism and misery, but which Fetch and the other Bastards keep hauling back up into indomitable, pig-headed hopefulness. The message I ended up taking away from it was that the world may indeed be shit and actively trying to kill you, but you’re stronger than it is, you’ve got shit worth soldiering on for, and every new breath you draw is another victory.
All of that on top of the breath-of-fresh-air fantasy trappings, the crass and colorful characters, the tight punch-to-the-gut writing style, and the “what if the Horde were biker gangs?” premise make The True Bastards an excellent sequel that helps cement the Bastards books as one of the most exciting and memorable series in fantasy today. I’ll happily keep living in the saddle for as long as this hog keeps charging on.
