2008.
536 pages (Gollancz Fantasy trade paperback).

“Life being what it is, one dreams of revenge.”
— Paul Gaugin.

This being the opening quote of Last Argument of Kings, the concluding volume in Joe Abercrombie’s The First Law series, one can perhaps perceive that this is a bleak affair. As I remarked in my reviews of the first two novels, The Blade Itself and Before they Are Hanged, the series has had a strong existentialist theme (or at least what I, with my dubious philosophical knowledge choose to dub “existentialist”), where a portrayal of the world as a dark, unfair place where one has to look for small mercies such as love or friendship. This is continued in (at least most of) Last Argument of Kings, where war, political unrest other such uncomfortable things are spreading. As I like writing reviews without too many spoilers in them, I’ll try not to say much more directly about the plot, and instead take a gander at something else. The setting, for example.

In his First Law world, Abercrombie has created a solid, deep world, which in spite of drawing heavily from the Tolkien-inspired epic fantasy tropes comes off as rather original. His Union, for example, isn’t just a generic idealized England or France during the High or Late Middle Ages, but while it is this, too, it also introduces elements recognizable as 16th and 17th century Holland, 15th through 18th century Spain, as well as some others, and the rest goes for his other civilizations: primarily based on one thing, but with heavy influences from others. Of course, seeing as Abercrombie hasn’t fallen for the temptation to send his characters on a lot more travels to show off his world, the Union and the North are the only civilizations we really get to see much of (the Old Empire was too much of a plain for me to claim I got to know it, but it was still obviously influenced by ancient China mixed with large doses of the fall of Rome and Abercrombie’s imagination). This is admirable, as many epic fantasy authors tend to get lost in the magnificent worlds they create (Jordan is probably the most prominent example).

One of the single most powerful products of Abercrombie’s imagination, though, was the Eaters. Considering the tiny amount of exposure they got, it is amazing how Abercrombie managed to nuance them and make them come off as almost more rounded than, say, Jordan’s Forsaken or any of Goodkind’s villain freakshow (with the possible exception of Darken Rahl, but only possibly). They had an ambiguity to them not normally seen in supposedly “evil” henchmen, to the extent that the even in the best of cases shady dichotomy of “good” and “evil” makes nothing even resembling sense in Abercrombie’s universe, something the supposedly “good” characters contribute their fair share to, too, to be, well, fair.

And we’re back to the theme. If you read my review of The Blade Itself, you might remember me talking about how the characters were in the process of building meaning for themselves in the darkness of a cruel existence, by tying bonds to other characters. Well, by the end of Last Argument of Kings (by the way what Louis XIV had printed on his artillery pieces, although in Latin, of course; the man had taste, after all) these attempts at building meaning had come crumbling to the ground. I won’t go into the specifics here, but during the close to 200 pages long, insane, wearying climax of the novel just about every character’s plans as well as their illusions of what the world is are torn to pieces, and the world is “revealed” to be a hideous, wickedly cruel place, where might is right (an imprecisely phrased concept, by the way; “might ignores right” or “might makes right” might possibly be better, depending on your definition of “right”) and no one’s irreplaceable. I thought for a while that the novel admirably ended with the world in a state not the status quo, but what it actually does, and this is way better, is that it reestablishes the REAL status quo — the system and relations of power –, while at the same time disintegrating the more superficial status quo — who the puppets of power are, and how these arrange their affairs. In Marxist terms, the superstructure is transformed, while the base remains the same. Or, perhaps more precisely, the base remains the same, as does the superstructure, but the relation between these become apparent to the main characters, and thus to the readers — the illusion of ideology (the Marxist term refering to the ideas and philosophies that legitimize and shroud that the system is, ultimately, based on power — according to Marxist theory, democracy and liberalism are part of the ideology of capitalism) is shed and shredded.

In the end Last Argument of Kings, while magnificently brutal, morbidly fun, recklessly fascinating, and at times awesomely inspiring, was too fucken dark for my taste, so I dock it about half a point or so for that. 9.0/10.