The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie
Hachette Livre provided books 2 and 3 of this fantasy series, but not book 1. So for a change, I actually parted with money for a book!!! That hasn’t happened in a while. However, I firmly believe that starting a trilogy with book two is unfair to the reader and the author.
So a couple weeks ago I began my journey. The world is quite recognizable, even European. There are three main ‘kingdoms’, the North inhabited by Northmen and Shanka, the Empire of the Gurkish in the south, inhabited by religious fanatics, and the Union, a monarchy of different duchies, among them Angland. The story opens with Logan Ninefingers, a northman, regaining consciousness to find himself alone. He is an independent man, and this is little problem, until he hears that the First of the Magi is looking for him. Enter Bayaz. The story then shifts to an arrogant young nobleman from the Union who is supposedly training for the annual fencing contest. But by far the most interesting of the main storytellers is Glokta, the inquisitor. He has spent years as a prisoner of the Gurkish, and returned home crippled and in constant pain from the torture. Now he has become expert at delivering torture to others.
Book one is essentially a set and character development piece. It took 300 pages to get each of the main three characters even into the same city. By the next 100 pages the fencing tournament had begun so there was some action. Then the story hurtled on to the setup for book 2.
Yes this book was long. Not much happened. But that does not mean that I did not enjoy the series. And this book is a critical part of the whole story. I loved the characters, especially Glokta. His wonderfully cynic asides to the reader lift this book from the normal adventure/fantasy genre. And Ninefingers is certainly more than he seems. It took 300 pages to develop the characters simply because they are beautifully complex and interesting.
