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The Blade Itself (The First Law, #1)

Joe Abercrombie

Start date: September 1, 2009

Finish date: September 30, 2009

Why we're reading this: September Main Selection
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Mar 31, 2014 Daniel Roy rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: sf, fantasy, abandoned

The Blade Itself is a promising fantasy epic torpedoed by serious flaws. It owes a lot to A Song of Ice and Fire's gritty realism—a fact which Abercrombie himself readily acknowledges—but alas, it proves that it is not so much the formula as George R.R. Martin's ability as a writer that made Game of Thrones such an smashing success.

The Blade Itself follows three POV characters: Logen "Ninfingers," a smart barbarian renegade; Jezal, a young military officer training for an important fencing tourn The Blade Itself is a promising fantasy epic torpedoed by serious flaws. It owes a lot to A Song of Ice and Fire's gritty realism—a fact which Abercrombie himself readily acknowledges—but alas, it proves that it is not so much the formula as George R.R. Martin's ability as a writer that made Game of Thrones such an smashing success.

The Blade Itself follows three POV characters: Logen "Ninfingers," a smart barbarian renegade; Jezal, a young military officer training for an important fencing tournament; and Sand dan Glokta, a former soldier turned torturer. Out of the three, Glokta was by far the most interesting. I loved the depiction of Logen, but he spends a lot of the novel not really knowing what he's doing or why; and Jezal was just a whiny character whose motivation beyond lusting after his friend's sister remained a mystery to me.

Glokta is at once the most controversial and interesting of the characters. He was an officer in the army who fell into the hands of the enemy and emerged a broken man. He is crippled by the torture he endured, a fact which the book hammers home every turn. This, in itself, is a novelty of the fantasy genre, although it's easy to see the "big shadow" cast by a certain Tyrion all the way to the Union.

The Blade Itself, being a gritty, realistic fantasy, has plenty of violence, of course. Truth be told, though, I found it boring and repetitive. Most of the violence in the book concerns Glokta, who, as a torturer, tortures a lot of people while simultaneously detailing the violence that was made to him. There isn't a lot of psychological finesse to it; he pulls fingernails and threatens irreparable bodily harm to his victims, who are more or less innocent. There is no great controversy here, no dark and twisted psychological exploration. Just people suffering at the hands of the inquisitor and his admittedly cool lieutenants.

What ultimately led me to abandon this book halfway through (despite having made it a whopping 300 pages in) is twofold. First, the prose isn't all that good. Character motivations and reactions are pretty on the nose. Jezal's love story, rather than redeem him, just gives him one more layer of clichéd characterization to contend with. Second, the characters, despite evolving in a "realistic" fantasy world, were pretty black and white. You'll find none of the shades of gray that make, say, Tywin Lannister so compelling. The king is a fat, useless slob to the end; the barbarian ruler is ruthless, proud, and strong. There's some nuance to Logen, but he's an island of complexity in a sea of sameness.

And so, after 300 pages, I just found myself not caring very much for any of these characters. I'm sure they face morally ambiguous situations and resolve them in surprisingly pragmatic ways... But as tantalizing as this might sound, I'm just gonna move on to better-written books with more tantalizing characterization. ...more

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