Book Review: The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie
The Blade Itself Is A Good Entry Into Fantasy
I recently finished The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie, and it lived up to the hype. For those that don’t read fantasy, Abercrombie is one of the bigger names writing right now. This was one of the first books of his I tried (I also read The Devils pretty much at the same time).
Before I get into the book, I want to give a little background. I’ve never been a big fantasy reader, but I recently wanted to jump in.
The biggest drawbacks of the genre for me were world building and the length of the bigger named series.
The stuff from J.R.R. Tolkien and George Martin were pretty much the extent of my fantasy reading and they scared me off the genre; both authors build these amazing worlds and grand epics, but they are slow reads. Songs, poems, and intricate details make the pace of their books on the slower end. As a result, I’ve never really been able to read any of their books back to back and haven’t finished either of the worlds they’ve built.
There have been a lot of series I’ve wanted to pick up, but they are normally multi-book series and I’m a little put off on having to read 5+ books to get the full story. Dungeon Crawler Carl would have been in this category, but I started it without knowing it was a full series of books (with book 8 due out next year). Abercrombie falls in this category, as does the other fantasy mainstay Brandon Sanderson.
Booktok really started to sell me on the genre, and I decided to start with Abercrombie. I started The Devils first, but had to get it back to the library before I was finished with it (yes, I use my library); I decided to go with The Blade Itself as the follow up until I could get The Devils back from the library.
The Blade Itself
Book 1: The First Law Trilogy
Joe Abercrombie
Amazon (Hardcover)
I had seen the pictured version of the book at the store numerous times and it stuck with me. When I saw that Abercrombie wrote it, I grabbed a digital copy from my library to read at the gym. I was quickly sucked in and bought the trilogy so I could really dive into it.
It’s set in a fantasy world (as opposed to a world somewhat similar to where we live, like he used in The Devils), but we don’t get a lot of background on the landscape; just bits and pieces when it’s appropriate for the story. This was a huge selling point for me.
We also get some very interesting characters. Right of the bat, we get Logen Ninefingers; I initially saw him as more of a knight/soldier, but you learn he’s more in line with Conan the Barbarian. Rather than giving us a long, drawn out history of the character, we get some flashbacks and internal monologue that builds his character; it’s actually how all the characters are used.
Other characters I liked included Glotka (former soldier and current inquisitor), Bayez (the first of the magi), and Luthar (a current soldier), which all were POV characters.
The book is written with each chapter featuring a new point of view. It also allows the readers to follow multiple plot threads and watch them come together.
While I generally enjoyed the book, there were a few issues.
On the back third of the book, we get introductions to new characters; it was a little puzzling to get these characters so late in the book after establishing the main cast. Were these going to be important players to the overall story? Where were they for the first 2/3rds of the book? While that is sort of resolved in the story, it still took out of the book momentarily.
The other issue I heard going into the book was the lack of action. The book is pretty much all set up, with a couple of small skirmishes and a fencing competition thrown in. It wasn’t a deal breaker for me, but it’s worth knowing going in.
Rating: 4 out of 5. This is that set up, origin story book for the bigger narrative. It’s still very enjoyable and doesn’t bog down readers with endless details on the land, battles, etc. I think this is a good jumping on point for someone looking to get into fantasy books.
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