The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie

Blurb:

The first novel in the First Law Trilogy and debut fantasy novel from New York Times bestseller, Joe Abercrombie.

Logen Ninefingers, infamous barbarian, has finally run out of luck. Caught in one feud too many, he's on the verge of becoming a dead barbarian -- leaving nothing behind him but bad songs, dead friends, and a lot of happy enemies.

Nobleman, dashing officer, and paragon of selfishness, Captain Jezal dan Luthar has nothing more dangerous in mind than fleecing his friends at cards and dreaming of glory in the fencing circle. But war is brewing, and on the battlefields of the frozen North they fight by altogether bloodier rules.

Inquisitor Glokta, cripple turned torturer, would like nothing better than to see Jezal come home in a box. But then Glokta hates everyone: cutting treason out of the Union one confession at a time leaves little room for friendship. His latest trail of corpses may lead him right to the rotten heart of government, if he can stay alive long enough to follow it.

Enter the wizard, Bayaz. A bald old man with a terrible temper and a pathetic assistant, he could be the First of the Magi, he could be a spectacular fraud, but whatever he is, he's about to make the lives of Logen, Jezal, and Glokta a whole lot more difficult.

Murderous conspiracies rise to the surface, old scores are ready to be settled, and the line between hero and villain is sharp enough to draw blood.

Unpredictable, compelling, wickedly funny, and packed with unforgettable characters, The Blade Itself is noir fantasy with a real cutting edge.

Review:

Who needs a map when you have a cold black heart to guide your way? Joe Abercrombie’s “The First Law Trilogy” starts with a rare flair and style that is transformative in the Grimdark Fantasy space. We explore the Circle of the World from just over the shoulder of six vastly different characters, each more violent and full of sin than the last.

This is an extremely character-driven story, and we follow their journeys through an unforgiving world. Of our three primary characters, I hate to love the barbaric Logen Ninefingers and the merciless Glokta, while I love to hate the petulant Jezel. More on them later.

As alluded to earlier, we do things a bit differently around here. There are no maps. No maps! In a fantasy novel, it’s heresy. There’s also no obvious objective we’re driving toward—a war is starting but the stakes feel low. What is happening? I’m actually quite a fan of all this ambiguity. Especially for the first novel, it’s different, it’s a risk, and it pays off. 

Why show a map of everywhere you’re going, if it’ll spoil the adventure? Why distract from the deep character work? Instead of answers we build a mausoleum of context and clues for the lore of the world. Instead of flowery descriptions of the mountains and the forests, we get bloody action sequences and death. The cast doesn’t have a map handy and aren’t sure where they’re headed either. It works to bring us closer into their minds to start off so disjointed. So while I typically prefer a central plot, I still enjoyed this mayhem.

All throughout, the writing is suffused with wry, black humor. How else can you cope in a world as grim and uncaring as this? Yet beneath all the grotesqueness, there are glimpses of warm hearts and tenderness, even from the darkest seeming souls. Every now and then you’ll be smacked with a trifecta perfectly hitting all three notes of the dark-tender-humor trinity, and for me that’s when it shined brightest. Take this from Inquisitor Glokta:

“Have you just been sitting here in the dark? Sometimes I worry about you, Practical Frost, I really do.”

Hilarious, dark, and sweet. Perfect.

Even beyond this unholy trinity, I had more reason to find Abercrombie’s prose compelling. On the surface, it is straightforward and punches hard. There’s a conscious use of repetitious phrasing to give it a somewhat philosophic framework and weight, yet you can still take it at face value. It’s not that serious. Call it ‘Dark Prose’ if you want, stripped of color and much flowery description, it brings you straight into the scene. 

Instead, the most poetic descriptions come from dialogue. They serve double to also flesh out a person as much as paint a picture. Take this beautiful soliloquy on swords compared to other weapons, as told by the old wizard Bayaz, who offers the reader a beautiful bit of poetry while also manipulating Logen into his service:

“But a sword…a sword has a voice. [...] it begins to whisper in your enemy’s ear. [...] It hisses a dire threat. It makes a deadly promise. Do you hear it?”

Our narrator would never take the time to wax so eloquently.

Well, except when the characters become our focalizers, which does happen often. At those times, we get more descriptive inner thoughts. Logen’s entire persona feels structured around these recurring mantras:

‘You have to be realistic, after all.

‘Some things have to be done. It’s better to do them, than to live with the fear of them.’

‘Better to have [a sword] and not want it than to want it and not have it.’

The man wants peace. He doesn’t want to die, but he’s ready if he must, and has accepted his fate a dozen times over. He also doesn’t want to fight, but when pushed, will find one last bout of viciousness within him whether he likes it or not…to say the least. 

So if you say one thing for Logen Ninefingers, say he’s full of contradictions.

Why he’s put his faith in the wizard Bayaz, I don’t know. The near-mythical figure has taken the wheel, and Bayaz is certainly an enigmatic presence throughout the story. He balances well the power and mystery that is often associated with the wise old magic man trope. We even get to see his powers at play more than once, and powerful they are. As part of the enigma, he seems not altogether trustworthy. Despite the clues, his motivations remain mostly unknown. Yet he’s pulling different threads throughout the wide world toward himself with a force of will that may as well be sourced from the Other Side.

“The First Law… It’s forbidden to touch the Other Side!”

So what is the Other Side anyway? Hell if I know. Maybe that’s where Hell is. But I’m not here to theorize, I’m here to review, and part of that is to say while we do get the occasional front row to magic—spells, spirits, hexes, enchantments—the exact cost is only hinted at, as we mostly skirt around the topic of the “Other Side.” Much remains obfuscated, and in fact, for most, they don’t interact with magic at all and believe it’s an old myth that no longer exists in the world, if it ever did at all. It’s a fun, mysterious system so far.

Logen seems to have some experience in this realm, and I hope we get to see more of just what it means to him as the story progresses. I don’t think he would agree with that, and would himself prefer to be left alone, but I’m afraid “some things have to be done.”

Fortunately for us, it’s not all old adventurers being grim, and gruelingly grinding their way across the lands. There’s also the young swords and their melodrama, and the scarred in-betweeners with their merciless Inquisitions.

I mentioned Jezel was someone I love to hate. He’s a young sword who’s talented, of the noble class, and he reminds you of the worst person you know. He is a selfish, vain, bad sportsman, and staunchly upholds a rigid class structure. But he’s not exactly cruel. I don’t want him to suffer, and I hope he grows, but in the meantime I do enjoy rooting against him, and am generally in favor of his various struggles. He also somehow develops a genuine love interest, and inexplicably it’s both earnest and, on the whole, cute. I do think there’s a likelihood this “relationship” looks very different from the other partner’s perspective, but there’s enough to chew on that I’m curious to see how it will develop.

Maybe it’s in part that I enjoy watching his minor misfortunes that I align most closely with the cynical Glokta of the Inquisition, who shares a similar outlook on Jezel, if not most of humanity. He’s ruthless, cruel, merciless, and gets results. He causes pain and is an equal opportunity torturer (for the record, I’m not exactly like Glokta). Beneath this scale coat of indelible facts is a man who himself was brutally tortured and twisted and whose life and future was stolen from him. Against all that he still somehow has a heart, blackened as it is, that has a certain tenderness to it for those close to him. 

Despite first appearances, Glokta is not a villain in this story. But in how he’s structured we see how villains more generally can be created and behave in ways that appear outwardly inconsistent. It’s a brilliant case study, and Glokta didn’t need to grow to achieve it, he just started the novel that way. And yet we see by the end he still does change, in his own way, by his openness to new information and willingness to change his mind when presented with it. There’s a clear case where an “enemy” becomes a friend once again when a simple misunderstanding is rectified. I was surprised, as most people I find are resistant to changing so quickly, but I suppose this is a strength of his, and I found it refreshing.

There are other perspectives we share beyond the three main storylines, vignettes of those who will no doubt play larger roles in the upcoming novels. Some start violent and show mercy, some start noble and show a disturbingly dark side. It’s a rich panoply of people. By the end we are all converging together for no doubt a dark and mysterious purpose. Seeing the cast, once isolated, interact with each other, shines new light on them and re-contextualizes them in a fresh way. When one member met Logen, for instance, the relative differences stood out in a sharp contrast to give Logen’s outwardly menacing visage a concreteness that was missing before, even though we had already spent so much time within his mind. I’m looking forward to more of these interplays going forward as it adds great depth.

For such a character focused story with so much variety, what unifying themes are here that ultimately pull this all together and drive us forward with inertia? Squinting, I see a spectrum for the inherent goodness and kindness of people within a dark world. One whose status quo rewards the cruel and ruthless. There are parallels to modern society you might say. We all generally want to be good and kind people, but we live in an environment that routinely rewards those who take advantage of the system and are cut-throat. 

On this spectrum, some of our cast are still deeply steeped in the darkness and are just finding glimmers of kindness within themselves. Others are actively seeking redemption, and others still are so numbed by it all, they only want to escape and seek some sliver of peace, or to at least accept the fate they feel they’ve earned for themselves. I think there’s still a long way to go for them all, and I’m sure it won’t be easy.

With all this modernization of the Grimdark formula, if there’s one thing I miss, it’s the focus on the  environment, and the physical world that has been trimmed away as much as possible. There’s little in the way of description of the forests, cities, and rooms that we’re in. There’s just enough to prime the engine of action before we move on. In lieu of any map, we’re journeying these lands fresh with the troupe and a little more in this area could help me visualize and really get immersed. And it’s not that Abercrombie can’t do it when he pleases; exploring the House of the Maker was vast and mesmerizing with its intricate mysteries. I loved the atmosphere he evoked while we were within its magical walls. But so often, we instead chose to focus on the matter at hand. It’s a stylistic choice and allows the story to stand out and stay fresh, but it’s not my favorite. Consider it a subjective nit-pick that shouldn’t take away from everything else that it has going for it.

Zoom out, and if you’re still reading and wondering if “The Blade Itself” is right for you, I would give it a solid recommendation. Take it from my friend who first sold me on the series:

“Oh man I don’t want to be this dude.
Please read the first law this year.
I just think it’s if Game of Thrones had a sack of n*ts.”

And he’s right (I could have just used a screencap from him and the review would have been a lot shorter for everyone). It takes clear inspiration from “A Song of Ice and Fire”, with a less political and intricate approach, while amplifying a more… enthusiastic embrace of the grimness and darkness. It’s got gumption. If that’s your jam, there’s a very good chance this will be as well. I’ve also heard “The Black Company” by Glen Cook is another good comp, but I haven’t read it yet myself.

Put it all together and “The Blade Itself” is an awesome, heavy-metal package that’s attained true bellwether status for the genre. So even if it’s not exactly the structure I normally prefer, I still can’t wait to continue the series. I am absolutely loving the characters and their world so far. It’s just too bad they wouldn’t say the same for themselves.