Paperback, 531 pages

English language

Published Sept. 6, 2007 by Pyr.

ISBN:
978-1-59102-594-8
Copied ISBN!
OCLC Number:
155715231

View on OpenLibrary

4 stars (37 reviews)

5 editions

Review of 'The Blade Itself' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Why Didn’t I Read This Earlier?


Did you enjoy Game of Thrones for its political and moral complexity but wished any of the characters were actually likable or sympathetic, or that there was a single friggin’ thing to laugh at in 5000 pages? Do you like your settings solid and realistic but with EXTREMELY unsettling mysteries and ancient secrets everywhere? Mostly, do you just enjoy a genuinely great book? You’re looking for The Blade Itself. Just drop the $10 and enjoy 300 pages of some of the best low (???) fantasy I’ve ever read, you won’t regret it.

Review of 'The Blade Itself' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

Well-crafted but the plot and characters follow the genre standards. Abercrombie follows the new style of trying to break stereotype (the Vikingnorthman beserker is introspective, the torturer has been on both sides of his profession, etc.) but never manages to leave the awareness that a character is from central casting with an after-market upgrade and the effect comes off more as “Look how serious and modern I'm being compared with old cliched epic fantasy!” than an actual improvement.

I'm in favor of depicting violence as unpleasant rather than glorified but the author was inconsistent in this – while one character shows severe lasting effects in general you have the usual fantasy trope of people being some of the best fighters in the world rather than half-crippled from their past escapades. This works better in the high-magic fantasy worlds with freely available healing magic but clashes oddly with the attempt at …

Review of 'The Blade Itself' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Fun to read. Very Game of Thronesy. Every main character is a douchecanoe in their own special way, but they're all just so likable.

The book doesn't really have an ending, though; so now it's time to get the next book in the trilogy.

EDIT: After having read most of the rest of the series, reducing this one to four stars. This book is really just a really long character introduction. A good one, mind you, but the plot doesn't get carried forward nearly as much as it does in the next two books.

Review of 'The Blade Itself' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

This is the best recent fantasy story I've read in years. However, while it hearkens back to the grim earthiness and visceral action of the sword & sorcery tales I love, it perpetuates one of the most obnoxious trends in modern fantasy: the trilogy.

It was vehement criticism that attracted me to this book, oddly enough. Some fantasy fans seem to consider Joe Abercrombie the vanguard of a fantasy sub-genre they've dubbed "the new nihilism." His books are bad because they're morally ambiguous. His characters are flawed, often in very nasty ways. "Nobles" tend not to be. There's a lot of gore. Unlike a lot of recent fantasy, he presents a world that's ugly and stinks and people shit and sometimes die for very little reason at all. I read all this criticism and thought "Sign me up!"

The characters were great. He takes archetypes (a dashing noble, an uncultured …

Review of 'The Blade Itself (The First Law: Book One)' on 'Goodreads'

1 star

First: I didn't finish this book. Now, for me, this is very unusual. Most of the time I give a book a fair chance, and want to judge it only after I read all of it. But not this one. These days, I have limited time to read, and so what I read better be entertaining for me. Or gets shelved again.

I liked Glokta. Well, a bit. You can say he was my favorite character. Had the most depth. Which was relative in this book. I always root for the quasi-bad-guy, so that was easy. I liked how Glokta thought about his work (a torturer/inquisitor), how he used to be a golden boy, but got maimed and crippled by torture, returned, and decided to deal out his share of truthfinding.

Logen Ninefingers started pretty good early in the story... and diminished into a strangely uninteresting 'barbarian ruffian with a …

Review of 'The Blade Itself' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

An outstanding debut novel and start to a trilogy. Abercrombie does a wonderful job of introducing all of the complex characters and manages to make them all fascinating in their own right, although every reader may favor some more than others. In my case, I am particularly captivated by both Logan, the practical barbarian that is haunted with regret, and Glotka, the crippled torturer and inquisitor.

Abercrombie is also very effective at introducing the reader to his world, without much tedious exposition, which is a welcome change from a lot of other epic-fantasy. He also clearly illustrates what is at stake and carefully sets the events in motion that one assumes will drive the course of the story in the next two books.

I do have one complaint, and that is that occasionally Abercrombie starts a chapter without clearly telling you which character's point of view the narrative is being …

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Subjects

  • English Science Fiction And Fantasy
  • Fiction
  • Fiction - Fantasy
  • Fantasy
  • Fantasy - Epic
  • Science Fiction & Fantasy / Fantasy
  • Fantasy - General
  • Sagas
  • Fantasy fiction