This is the final book in The First Law trilogy by Joe Abercrombie. I wasn’t a big fan of the first book of the series, so at first I wasn’t sure if I wanted to keep reading. My dad had read the entire series and assured me the trilogy got better as it went on.
He wasn’t kidding.
Abercrombie’s writing isn’t great, but it does get better with each book. The first book (his first published book, so I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt) was basically introducing you to all the main characters of the series. That’s great and all, but what does this have to do with anything?
Don’t worry about it, because he’s getting there. I promise. When I read the second book of the series, I was reminded how much I loved the characters. Abercrombie has his faults as a writer, but character development is not one of them. These characters come right off the page. You know what they’re seeing, feeling, and thinking, although you don’t always know what they’re going to do next. Especially Glokta. He was my favorite character from the very beginning, and continues to be so through the end of the series.
This book reminded me a lot of Game of Thrones. There are Northmen who are basically savages who are busy fighting everyone, including each other. The people in the country to the south are occupied in their various battles for power. Unlike Game of Thrones, one man, Bayaz, holds all the cards in this power play, and the Northmen are not excluded. He knows he holds all the cards, but no one else does (including the reader) until the very end.
I was rooting for Bayaz when he was first introduced, but now I’m not so sure. Abercrombie made it clear pretty early on that Bayaz had his own agenda, but he wouldn’t tell us what that agenda was. It turns out he was doing some pretty freaky things with magic that probably aren’t such a good idea. The trilogy is named after the First Law of Euz, which states that there shall be no mixing of our world and the “Other World” (meaning magic). Any time anyone uses magic (meaning Bayaz, because none of the other main characters have that capability), they have to borrow from the “Other World”. So it basically comes down to break the First Law or stop being a Magi, and Bayaz has absolutely no intention of doing the latter.
I was on Bayaz’s side at first because his nemesis, Khalul, was busy breaking the Second Law, which states thou shalt not eat people. Cannibals who break this law become known as “Eaters” and the process apparently gives them super strength, speed, and immortality. So I was rooting for Bayaz because he was fighting the guys who were eating people and eating people is very, very bad.
But everything comes with a cost. Bayaz mixes together different kinds of magic to make a whole new kind of magic. He’s pretty proud of himself for accomplishing this, but one of the side effects is a disease that kills thousands of people. Bayaz just doesn’t care because he considers each life insignificant in the grand scheme of things. He may be right, but that makes him not a good guy. I don’t think it necessarily makes him a bad guy, because he’s not actively trying to hurt people, but he’s definitely not a good guy.
In any case, the final installment of the trilogy was an action-packed book that thrilled and delighted me for the full 636 pages. My only complaint about the writing was Abercrombie’s incessant use of “Say one thing of Logen Ninefingers, say he’s …” It got really old. Likewise for his constant reminders that “You have to be realistic.”
There was also a chapter in which Abercrombie switched between characters by using the same word or phrase in dialogue at the end of one section and the beginning of the next section. That works on screen, but not as well in books. Even on screen it only works once. Maybe twice. Using it over and over again is unimaginative.
What about you guys? What did you read this week? Anything that was better than you expected? I want to hear all about it in the comments!
Photo credit: <a href=”https://www.flickr.com/photos/hernanpc/8912182840/”>Hernan Piñera</a> / <a href=”http://foter.com/”>Foter</a> / <a href=”http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/”>CC BY-SA</a>