The Sword Itself
by Joe Abercrombie

2006
527 pages

The Union is about to come under assault. In the south the Gurkish are arming for war; to the north the Northmen have been united under the brutal King Bethod; even further to the north the Shanka are massing; and in the union’s heart, the Agriont, the castle area of the capital Adua, reactionary forces are gathering their strength to throttle the fortunes of the jumped up commoners who dirty their hands with trade. However, the Union is not ready for war. It’s only been seven years or so since the last war with Gurkhul; Angland, their northern colony, is prepared to defend against a barbarian tribe or two, but not all of them, at once, under a unified command; they don’t even know the Shanka exist; and the majority of the Union’s leaders and aristocrats are small-minded, petty and decadent.

Captain Jezal dan Luthar is one such nobleman, as he saunters through life without anything on his mind but his next erotic conquest and his fencing practice. He has only contempt for his commander, the commoner Captain Collem West, who in turn loathes the nobles for their derision of the lower classes. Inquisitor Sand dan Glokta, West’s old friend, used to be like Luthar, but today he is mostly marked by the two years he spent in the dungeons of the Gurkish emperor during the war; he is a cripple, and a geriatric at 35.

To the north the barbarian fighter Logen Ninefingers, the Bloody-Nine, has just discovered that the Shanka are preparing for an attack on the south, and believing that he has lost all his friends, he is hurrying to warn the rest of the Northmen of the impending danger. His quest, however, is not going to be what he thinks it will.

These are the basic elements of The Blade Itself, the first book in Joe Abercrombie’s The First Law series, and if you think it sounds like archetypical Fantasy, only with slightly idiosyncratic characters, then you are more or less right. Of course, Abercrombie belongs to the gorier, dirtier and arguably more realistic part of the Fantasy genre, with more Realpolitik, more double-crossing and a lot more morally gray characters than the typical Epic Fantasy of the last 30-odd years, but no matter how marginal, the classic Epic plot with its blacks and whites, good and evil, it is still there, as are the promises that it will take centre stage later on.

I won’t hold this kind of relative lack of originality against an author, though, so long as the artistry involved is solid, and he or she manages to put an original-seeming spin on it all. And this, Abercrombie manages. His characters are admirably unforgettable, he writes good dialogues, manages to be amusing, and writes what has got to be some of the best fight scenes I have ever read. They are clearly described, without ever getting so clinical that all immersion is killed, they are bloody, and characters get injured, even seriously, and because of this seem to be in actual harm. In fact, Abercrombie’s writing is overall quite good, with only one major exception that I can think of, when one of the main characters (or the narrator; the whole perspective/voice thing is a bit unclear, and it might just be that Abercrombie shifts to Free Indirect Discourse in mid-sentence) during a fight that’s not going to well digresses into a short contemplation of his life, before returning to the battle about half a paragraph later.

Aside from this, one of my few complaints is that the plot progression was a bit on the dawdling or unfocused side at times. Or, rather, this isn’t really a complaint, as the novel is about as much a novel of character as it is a novel of plot, and as such needed a lot of time to get into the heads of the characters. Also, there weren’t really any uninteresting characters, and in retrospect few scenes stand out to me as superfluous. However, I was left with a feeling that the main plot thread and the ditto villain (as well as several of the minor ones) ought to have been described a bit more clearly, instead of only being hinted at through fragments of conversation and old stories. Obviously, this creates suspense, but I suspect the suspense wouldn’t have been diminished much by an additional couple of scenes, in which events focused more at the Epic plot could have unfolded.

Thematically, it seemed to have this whole “life is unfair and generally shitty otherwise, too” thing going for it. Meritocracy is non-existent, or an illusion; the people on top are greedy bastards, who care for nothing but their ambitions; the people down throughout the system don’t seem to care much about anyone but themselves, either; and might might not be right per default, but then might never really had to care about “right”, anyway, as it can pretty much do what is wants to. The world of the First Law is a most bleak one, in other words, but one which feels almost depressingly familiar.

However, as the plot progresses and we are shown more and more of the world’s inherent darkness, some lights appear, too. To begin with they are weak, almost imperceptible, but their mere existence, no matter how subtle, brings hope and warmth into the world. The most important ones of these lights are obviously friendship and love, but others, such as a sense of purpose, even through vengeance, a hope of redemption, or the mere will to live on, are important too.

All the main characters — Glokta, Logen, Jezal, Ferro, West, Ardee — are to a large extent horribly messed up loners, who in many ways personify the state of the universe. Glokta is resentful of others and bitter because of his fate, emotions that often combine into self-pity; Logen is running away from his past, purposeless and shameful; Jezal is an arrogant, conceited, vain ass; Ferro is concerned with nothing except her headless search for vengeance, which might not be a search for vengeance as much as it is a search for death; West, although perhaps the most sympathetic of the characters early in the book, is revealed to be overly concerned with his reputation and his career; and Ardee, well, Ardee might not be concerned enough with her reputation.

Towards the end of the novel, though, the glimmers of light in the darkness seems to be making an impact on them. None of them change much throughout the novel’s five hundred plus pages, but the seeds of change look like they have been sown, and I, for one, am looking forward to seeing how this all turns out.

Naturally, this theme here is rather stock existentialist stuff and the theme of countless novels, many of them doubtlessly better than this one. So why should people care about The Blade Itself? My answer to this, beyond the standard one that every piece of art is (or should be) a purpose or a thing of value in itself, is that this might be the most philosophically conscious Fantasy novel I’ve read, if you exclude Bakker and Erikson (and possibly Martin and Gaiman, too — in other words, when Abercrombie gets a few more novels under his belt, he just might be great). Just the fact that it’s there and seems to me to be structurally grafted into the story by Abercrombie is something I feel like applauding. My impression (see note in next paragraph for a qualification on this) is that Science Fiction has been miles ahead of Fantasy in this area for decades now. Where Sci-Fi has been concerned with describing human beings in various conditions — conditions often designed with the primary purpose of examining how they’d affect the people living under them, be they technological, political, social or otherwise — Fantasy seems to have been more concerned with the portrayal of grand narratives, and to have been caught in the tropes of the Romance that is the genre’s ancestor.

(I feel I should mention that I am quite aware that this whole thing might just be me projecting my own world view on The Blade Itself, and that my views of Abercrombie as refreshingly philosophically conscious when compared to others might stem from the fact that just six months ago, I wasn’t interested in philosophy at all, at least not beyond political theory.)

In sum, I quite liked The Blade Itself. It was relatively fast-paced, while at the same time character-oriented. It was a fun read, but with a lot of uncomfortable interludes, such as Glokta’s torture sessions or the many, small and pitched fights, although these latter ones tended to move into the territory of cool a lot of the time. I do believe this feels like a 7.5/10 novel. No less, at least, but I don’t think too much more, either. Looking forward to getting started on the sequel.