Joe Abercrombie
2007
Gollancz
517 pages
Amazon/Book Depository/B&N
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 Glotka 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.
Generally, when I read straight up Epic Fantasy, I read it out loud to my husband. This means that most books in this genre take a few months to get through, depending on how much time we spend in the car, or how much he wants me to read to him. So, I can spend months entrenched in a fantasy world and with books like Scott Lynch's and Patrick Rothfuss's, its often hard to find anything that lives up to their precedents.
That being said, Joe Abercrombie is not doing a bad job. The book was a little slow moving, and I'm not entirely sure where it was going. It seemed like the entire book was a set up for characterization as the characters are now either on a great quest or fighting wars.
The characters are as different and varied as you can expect. There is a crotchety torturer with a deep and scarred past, a puffed up Gaston like character, a crazy northern berserker, a wizard trope, and a sundry of other characters.
Even though the book didn't feel like it went anywhere, it was still interesting. The concept is sound and it looks to be gearing up for something both intense and tragic.
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