Where the rivers Dapple and Dawl converge is situated the small country port of Lud-in-the-Mist, capital of the free state of Dorimare. From here, the burghers send their trading ships out into the world, bringing back wealth to the upper strata of Dorimarite society. But Lud and Dorimare has a dark past. No more than two hundred years ago the burghers had themselves a revolution, where they deposed the Duke Aubrey and established a oligarchy. Being sensible people, they also banned the import of Fairy Fruit to county and town, as this forbidden fruit had a tendency of making people less sensible than the burghers would have them be. However, in spite of the ban Dorimarites, usually from the lower classes, continued to be discovered in various addled states by the town militia — a clear sign that “silk” (as the burghers referred to fruit as in their laws, refusing even to acknowledge the existence of anything out of the ordinary) still found its way down the Dapple, from across the Elfin Marshes and the Debatable Hills.

Nathaniel Chanticleer has been Mayor of Lud for a long time, and while he outwardly maintains a façade of respectability, he has a penchant for the strange and morbid, and enjoys few things more than wandering the Lud graveyard, reading epitaphs and wondering what his own epitaph will be. However, when a plague of Fairy Fruit addled minds spreads through even the ruling classes of Lud and things look as if they might fall apart very soon, Lud’s eccentric Mayor has to get his feet on the ground and save his town.

Above all else, Lud-in-the-Mist is an amusing novel. However, it’s not so much a laugh-out-loud novel as it is a somewhat more low-fi satirical novel, closer related to the works of Jane Austen than to , say, Terry Pratchett. In other words, there are exceedingly few silly elements in the novel, and the few there are, are usually products of an Austen-like narrator’s subtle and ironic ridiculing of his or her characters; that is, perceived silliness rather than more real sillyness.

Because the novel is also fairly realistic. Granted, it might be that it fails to fulfill many (if any) of Ian Watt’s five criteria for formal realism (if I’d read a bit faster when proof reading my sister’s Master’s thesis paper earlier today, I might have been able to say for sure), but it is obvious that it tries. For the society of Lud and Dorimare, the historical, economic, social and political context is given, sometimes, where required, fairly detailed, too, something not very common in less realistic childrens’ novels about fairies and such — although it is undeniable that Lud-in-the-Mist also have a lot in common with this kind of literature, at least in what pertains to subject matter.

Additionally, there are quite a lot of often very sordid crimes going on in Dorimare, and while the novel is almost completely devoid of outright action sequences — depending more on something of a detective story for its suspense — there is the occasional murder, morbid event and thorough, almost scientific description of the effects of certain poisons, to mention some examples — all of which illustrate that this is hardly children’s fiction, in spite of the fairies, and the funny and the slightly comical, clumsy adult protagonist.

The themes are also quite adult. As I believe I’ve stated earlier, I don’t have a good eye or head for metaphors, but I dare say I’ve got at least some inklings as to what the Fairy Fruit is supposed to be, namely artistic or individualistic impulses. Here, Lud-in-the-Mist is at its most Romantic, and displays most blatantly its genre’s roots in the anti-rational reaction to the Age of Enlightenment. (By the way, have I mentioned how much I love having a sister who’s aiming for a PhD in Literary Studies? ) The sensible world of the capitalist, bureaucratic and legalistic Dorimarite burghers is most often presented as a stale, boring, uninspiring place, while the pre-revolution era, when the Fairy friend Duke Aubrey ruled is put forth as lively, artistically experimental, and whatnot. Of course, this picture is hardly unambiguous, as Aubrey is also portrayed as mildly despotic, while the reign of the burghers is seen as stable and prosperous. Thus, Fairy Fruit becomes more than a simple allusion, as it can also be perceived as opposition to tradition, but opposition not without less positive effects, and Lud-in-the-Mist takes on the nature of a synthesis between Romantic and Realistic, with a central motif being the importance of balance between tradition and progress, stability and chaos.

Of course, the whole Realm of Fairy does at one point seem to evolve into a kind of metaphor for death, or something like that, and the novel has an ending I’m not quite sure fits into the synthesis model I outlined above (although I seem to remember that it did fit, too — weird), and I while I have some vague feelings about how this fits into the theme, it’s not something I think is solid enough to share. Unless, of course, I just struck gold with a random thought that just popped into my mind: You see, during Master Nathaniel Chanticleer’s journey to Fairy (not really much of a spoiler), he witnesses how this realm’s inhabitants seem to live in something resembling nothing as much as a perpetual fair, where people go around all day doing little else but having fun — as a kind of contrast to the world of Lud, where even the act of telling jokes have taken on almost ritual nature.

Of course, the whole death-thing still doesn’t fit, but I hope these last two paragraphs have given you at least an impression of how multi-faceted the themes of Lud-in-the-Mist are.

All in all, I think I quite liked Lud-in-the-Mist. It was a fun little novel, which managed to be both frivolous and serious, and the aforementioned detective story elements occasionally drove me onto the edge of the proverbial seat. 8.0/10.

“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.

When young Airar Alvarson is evicted from his family farm by a henchman of the occupant Vulkings, he does not require much prodding to join the Dalecarl resistance, who are (or would be) fighting against the Vulkings’ rule over their homelands of Dalarna. A seemingly chance meeting with the old enchanter and sophist Meliboë sends him on a journey that will take him all across Dalarna and finally into the mythology of his nation.

In other words, The Well of the Unicorn in rather typical heroic fantasy. At the beginning of the story Airar is little more than a yokel; he knows some magic, and how to hunt, but of politics, war and all things courtly he is ignorant. The novel follows him through ups and downs, and shows how he develops from an innocent boy to a great leader — a development luckily caused more by accident, fortune and coincidence than by ambition and design, as the latter would have greatly reduced Airar’s humanity in my eyes.

As heroic fantasy, though, it is actually almost interesting. Published in 1948 — about a decade after the death of Robert E Howard and a decade and a half before Leiber, Moorcock and that bunch broke onto the scene –, Fletcher’s Airar seems to have more in common with Moorcock’s Elric and Leiber’s Fahrd and the Grey Mouser than with Howard’s testosterone monster Conan — although, admittedly, almost all my experiences with Conan comes from the comics. Still, the hesitant yet dedicated, uncertain yet powerful Airar, with both magical and martial aptitudes, seems to be to be a fairly typical sword and sorcery hero. In fact, he may be one of the best of these I have read, at least from the earlier period of the genre. Like I said, I haven’t read any of Howard’s Conan stories, but I’ve read a lot of the comics, and I’ve read his short story “The Valley of the Worm”, and I suspect I wouldn’t like Conan much; he is too brash, too sure of himself, too victorious. Elric, based on the five short stories and one novella I have read about him, was too arrogant, and while arrogance can be an interesting character flaw, I never found it particularly so when it was Elric’s only flaw, and in addition the one that brought down a world. Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser I haven’t read much of, but while I found what little I have read promising, and far more many-faceted and interesting than Conan and Elric, there still was a certain je ne sais qua, that didn’t appeal to me, although I suspect that this will change once I get around to reading a bit more than 170 pages about their antics and adventures.

Airar, though, possibly because he was the centre of attention of an over 300 pages long novel, is something else. It is almost pure accident (tempered a little by Meliboë’s magic) that puts him in touch with the Dalecarl resistance, and coincidence and misunderstanding and lies, mixed with a touch of flair for leadership, that establishes him as one of the uprising’s leaders. And once at the top, Airar is human enough to doubt the righteousness of his being there, as well as to question the nature of politics, which in his world seems to send a society either into a system of democracy or one of aristocracy, neither of which appeals particularly much to young Airar, who at times seems more like an anarchist, rural farmer’s son that he is. (Although “anarchist” isn’t quite right, either.) Which is ironic, if actually the case, as Airar ends up as the lord of Dalarna, if a mildly unhappy and uncomfortable one. (What, a spoiler? This? Surely you, my literate and learned reader, knows enough of the heroic branch of fantasy to know that they practically always end up as lords of something or other?)

This ambiguity is perhaps one of the novel’s strong points. Others include the many and serious setbacks in the Dalecarls’ struggle for freedom, which lends realism to the plot; the ridiculous number of morally grey characters; Airar’s constant search for a philosophical way out of his political conundrum, which usually ends with him losing a discussion to one of his older, more philosophically advanced companions (or foils, if you will); and the poignantly bittersweet ending, just to mention a few things.

On the less strong side, we find such things as a certain degree of predictability (then again, predictability is almost a genre trait); a language that is a bit hard to get around at times, as both its vocabulary and syntax are a bit archaic (I’ve been told this is because early English and American fantasy authors tried to emulate the German ones, but my source for this is somewhat unreliable); a tendency to have otherwise realistic and rounded characters fall in love instantaneously; not to mention the fact that the power of the Well of the Unicorn itself is never properly explained. It is mentioned that the heathens from across the sea respect and don’t attack the realms of rulers who have drunk from the Well, and that it is seen as a source of both religious and political authority. There are some allusions towards it having a mystical nature, without this being further specified. This is somewhat annoying, as the Well plays a rather important role in the politics of Pratt’s world, and The Well of the Unicorn is ultimately a political novel. However, it’s probably just a metaphor for something, and I’ve never been good with metaphors, so I’m aware that this point of annoyance might have risen from my own incompetence.

The Well of the Unicorn is a well-paced and interesting novel, both as a historical showcase in the development of the fantastic genre and as a heroic fantasy novel. However, the emphasis might be on the former, so if you’re not too interested in examining how the genre developed, this might not be the thing for you. It is also kinda clichéd. It borrows heavily from the Medieval Romances, as do most epic or heroic fantasy, but although it is far from cliché free, it isn’t as bad as one might have feared. There’s also a lot of action; the novel isn’t all political discussions. It’s not very good, though, merely decent. 6.5/10. (As a minimum, that is.)

(This review is based on a comment I wrote on the review of The Blade Itself. It contains NO SPOILERS! The “more” thing is only there to soothe any spoilerphobics who might happen to read this.)

When I first finished Before they are hanged, the second book in Joe Abercrombie’s The First Law trilogy, I wasn’t sure if I should write a review of it or not. Normally, I don’t write reviews of sequels, as they usually end up being a list of spoilers for those who haven’t read the book in question, followed by a few paragraphs easily boiled down to “more of the same”, with a possible addition of “but better” or “but worse”.

Which is what the case was with Before They Are Hanged: More of the same, only slightly better. The world is still interesting (with a fun Moria hommage, done almost by the book, excepting the rather conspicuous absence of any Balrog-like demons), still intriguing characters, more realistic violence, still a mainly transparent and predictable plot, although with the occasional surprising detail, a continuation of its predescessor’s existentialist theme, and so on and so forth.

Before They are Hanged is solid piece of work, in other words, and slightly more so than The Blade Itself. Its most fascinating feature was the most serious non-lethal injury I think I’ve ever seen (or at least can remember seeing) afflicted on a main character in a fantasy novel — especially in a world without any magical healing avaliable.

If I were to rate it, I suppose I’d give it a strong 8/10, bordering on an 8,5, meaning that the series as a whole could end up with a rating very close to 9.5 if the last installment is as good as they claim.

Whether or not that is the case is something I’ll have to wait for about a week to find out, as I sent “Last Argument of Kings” home last weekend, and ain’t going where it is for another week.

2001 (1970, 1962, 1970).
165 pages.
“Induction” (2 pages)
“The Snow Women” (74 pages)
“The Unholy Grail” (27 pages)
“Ill Met in Lankhmar” (62 pages)

Swords and Deviltry is the first collection of short stories in the Gollancz Fantasy Masterworks series’ The First Book of Lankhmar omnibus. In it is contained the story of how Fafhrd came to run away from his barbarous village far to the north, where his clan’s women ruled supreme over the men through the power of their frost magic (”The Snow Women”); the tale of how the hedge wizard acolyte Mouse came home from a journey to find his master betrayed and dead, set out to avenge his master, and finally left for Lankhmar as the Grey Mouser (”The Unholy Grail”); and finally how these two came to meet in that city, how they befriended each other, and how they became as close as brothers (”Ill Met in Lankhmar”).

It is more or less classic sword and sorcery. Fafhrd has an uncanny resemblance with Conan, and the Grey Mouser have some traits in common with, say, Elric (master swordsman and more or less able sorcerer) although with a lot of roguish characteristics as well. They inhabit a world of dark magic and cruel men, with large, sprawling city states and gargantuan, thinly populated wild areas, and an ancient history. Much of this is only hinted at in Swords and Deviltry, though, but seeing as it contains only the first three of about a hundred Fafhrd and Grey Mouser short stories, I assume more detail will be added later.

Not that it’s in any way light on detail as it is. Leiber’s prose has a very Baroque feeling to it, with a slightly archaic syntax (not as archaic as most of the Fantasy writers of only a generation before, though); a lot of old words, especially adjectives, rarely seen today; a dark tone; and very lavish and organic descriptions of surroundings, atmosphere, characters, and what have you. At times the text is so packed with information reading becomes slow, but Leiber still manages to keep it all interesting enough to make it worth reading.

The stories do, however, wear their individual short story origins on their sleeves, at times, and it is quite obvious that the stories are written in a whole different sequence and only collected in an intradiagetical chronology (so to say) on a later point in time. This, combined with roguish characters who live by their wits and their skill with a blade, contributes greatly to the picaresque atmosphere of the collection as a whole, but the fact that they are, after all, put together in a chronological sequence, reduces the annoyance this relative lack of continuity and consistency might generate.

For me, the main weakness of the collection was that beyond the introduction of the characters of Fafhrd and Grey Mouser, it did not contain a sustained plot. Granted, this is a general dislike I have, one that makes me prefer long narratives (e.g. novels) over shorter ones (such as novellas and short stories). Granted, too, that the whole Lankhmar sequence might be said to constitute a single narrative of sorts, or even that a deeper, broader, more lasting and unified plot might surface later on, but in the case of this first collection, none of this really matters to me.

All in all, I was left with a most ambivalent impression of Fritz Leiber’s works. It showed great promise, and was almost exquisitely well made, but that it is basically a collection of semi-related short stories kinda ruins it for me, and will make it hard for me to pick the collection up again and read on.

6.0/10.

“Culturally Latin Christendom, like a ruined family that could no longer maintain its old dwelling, came to live in a few rooms in the cellar.”

— F.B. Artz,
as quoted in Torbjørn L. Knutsen’s A History of International Relations Theory, p. 22.

You’re completely right; Lord Kubota stands there reading one of the books from the DnD 4th Edition core rulebook set, which he’s obviously ordered from Amazon.

It’s a small thing, I know, but it still warms my heart somewhat.

(And never mind the fact that from what I’ve seen and heard of the 4th edition, it represents a substantial dumbing down of the game. Which, according to my game-mate, is symptomatic of the game’s development since 2nd Edition.)

“The nineteenth century’s legacy to the twentieth century’s social scientists resembles an old house inherited from a rich aunt: worn, overdecorated, cluttered, but probably salvageable.”

— Charles Tilly,
as quoted in Torbjørn L. Knutsen’s A History of International Relations Theory.

On the other hand, the same person also sent me this (in the same mail, actually), an “Are You A Heretic?” test. Which is mildly entertaining for a naturalist, and even more so for a naturalist who’s just spe tmuch of the last five months reading about Byzantine and other medieval history of knowledge, a field where the various heretical denominations play a small but important role.

I imagine it could be of interest to those of you less ontologically extreme than me, too.

My results, by the way:

You scored as a Pelagianism
You are a Pelagian. You reject ideas about man’s fallen human nature and believe that as a result we are able to fully obey God. You are the first Briton to contribute significantly to Christian thought, but you’re still excommunicated in 417.
Nestorianism
33%
Pelagianism
33%
Socinianism
33%
Gnosticism
33%
Albigensianism
33%
Adoptionist
33%
Chalcedon compliant
17%
Monarchianism
17%
Monophysitism
17%
Donatism
0%
Modalism
0%
Apollanarian
0%
Arianism
0%
Docetism
0%

Now I gotta go read up on Pelagianism, too. Crap. Sort of.

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.