La Voz de las Espadas

Had to admit to myself once again that a fantasy book was not working for me - and such a well loved one at that. :’)

I liked Jezal and Glokta’s POVs well enough. I felt like they had a lot of potential for growth. Logen, though - he suffered the Eddard/Jon of GoT problem. Generic honorable man is just not that interesting, dark past or not. I didn’t get to the fourth POV because I DNFed at 25%.

The main reason I DNFed is because I was bored. ☺️ Nothing was happening that I cared much about, and what was there honestly felt a bit simplistic. Also - this is grimdark? GoT, Realm of the Elderlings, She Who Became the Sun, and Winds of the Forelands are all darker. There’s humor in this that really screws up the grim vibe.

I was also kind of stunned that there wasn’t a single named female character until 60+ pages into the book. When Ardee appears, I was sort of okay with her characterization, but she’s definitely not like other girls and intended mainly as a romantic interest for Jezal.

Lastly, in contrast to everything else I read, when I read fantasy I want lush description. I googled fan art for this book a good bit because I could not figure out what the vibe was, what era this was meant to imitate, what anyone’s uniforms looked like, etc. For all Logen’s talk of Flatheads in the first couple chapters, I had no idea what they were supposed to look like. Dogs? Humanoid? What?

Is this the price of reading Robin Hobb?? I can’t enjoy anything else…

Wow, this ended up really surprising me. I walked into this book having heard some of the more common criticisms, namely the almost complete lack of plot. I'm more of a character reader myself, so I wasn't terribly worried. But even though interesting character work is important to me as a reader, I also really REALLY don't like it when the first book of a series exists solely as an introduction without its own story to lean on, so I started this off This book expecting to be really critical of that. However I knew that Abercrombie's character work was very well regarded, so I was curious to see how that tension panned out. And I have to admit, the characters won me over hard.

We follow several different POV characters as they move about their own individual adventures without any real consistent through line or story. There are hints of a larger conflict brewing, but it's kept hidden away from the reader for the most part. Each character is dynamic and interesting in unique ways: a pompous noble-blooded soldier who starts to grow a heart for "commoners", a mutilated and discarded war veteran turned cold blooded investigator, a violent one-track minded brute, a frenzied rage fueled former slave, and a cryptic and cynical wizard. Each have their own motivations and goals which rarely overlap with each other. But each story was so compelling on its own that I found it really fascinating to follow, even without a strong connection between them. While the book didn't have a compelling story alone, each of these characters had a compelling, fully fleshed out story, lending to a satisfying reading experience. The ending I also found compelling enough that I am now motivated to jump right into the sequel. Maybe I'll resist that urge to push through some of the rest of my TBR, but maybe not!

Stop me if you heard this one before: a long forgotten but powerful mage, a fencing pretty boy from high society, and a rugged brute have their fates intertwined as a larger and more sinister plot threaten the country.

What could have been a boring and trite story was anything but. Abercrombie avoided a rehash of a familiar story by having distinct and interesting characters and a narrative that moved along quickly. From the first chapter I was hooked and my enjoyment of the story never let up. Just as I abandoned a previous fantasy series I wondered if I needed to take a break but Abercrombie proves that a simple story concept doesn't have to be boring.

Each character/POV has their own struggles and interesting backstory that you never feel tired and you find yourself rooting for some pretty unlikable people (a famed swordsman turned torturer). The story has a gradual build adding in layers of political intrigue, a dash of magic and mystery and wonderful action sequences that I found myself saying 'just one more chapter' frequently.

I am excited to carry on the series and continue this world Abercrombie created.

Damn good, stay- up- all- night- reading worthy, better than most fantasy and as exciting and engrossing as the best epics. I loved this book, even though there are a limited number of empowered females and I am hard pressed to say how it is different from other fantasy epics- while it does not have dragons, there is plenty of intrigue, and knights, magi , torturers idiot monarchs and troubled warriors are not new.... What makes it stand out is the fascinating and complex characters, the vivid, excellent writing and nuanced, complex connection between the characters themselves and the threats facing them. These threats are vague, and manifold, and much seems unresolved, with a cliffhanger ending. But it is a damn good author that can make you like a sadist and a guy who beats up a woman, and a woman who spits on everyone and tries to kill them, and then lets not forget the vain, self-affected snob who stole my heart is well. I put this book in the top 10 or 15 fantasy books I have read, ever.

It's a long book and it just serves to introduce some characters and part of a fantasy world. Nothing much happens in this one, but I expect the story will unfold in the next two books, which I don't intend to read. (I'm interested in what happens though. I'll try to find some spoilers.)

It tries hard to be original in the characters and the setting, but somehow it didn't work for me. If I just look at the character traits, like a crippled inquisitor who used to be a favored, handsome young man, it all sounds interesting. But then they still manage to come out two-dimensional, nothing more than the sum of these traits. The characters don't come alive.

One part where the book surprisingly excels is humor. It's supposed to be this dark, gritty fantasy epic, but I found myself chuckling several times. The characters may not be engrossing enough for drama, but they work quite well for comedy!

This is the first book in a trilogy called The First Lawand I should stress that it is not in itself a complete story. In fact, in many ways it reads more like a prologue. A coming together of the cast and setting the stage before the story itself gets going.

That’s being a little harsh perhaps, but I didn’t find it a satisfying experience to read just this book so it’s worth noting. Be prepared to invest in all three books. And it is probably worth your time reading all three because this one has a lot to recommend it.

Now right before reading The Blade Itself I had just finished a re-read of The Lord Of The Rings (my first in a while) and so I couldn’t help comparing the two books while I was reading this one. And it’s quite a contrast.

While The Lord Of The Rings deals in heroic figures who are larger than life and better than the average man, The Blade Itself is populated with mean, petty, broken people. Aragorn and Frodo are the sort of people we might aspire to be, while the characters here are the sort we would look down on and judge wanting.

And yet, throughout the book and despite the horrible things that some of the characters do, there is a thread of hope of redemption running through Joe Abercrombie’s story. The suggestion that regardless of what they have done they can do something good. A detail that I think actually rings true in Tolkien’s work as well.

While unquestionably modern fantasy with all itsgrimdark trappings there are moments here where wondrous buildings are described and events are narrated where it sounds like just the sort of thing we might see in Middle-Earth. So we have an interesting melding of the classic high fantasy with the new gritty realism.

And the characters are very interesting and quite complex. You may well not like them very much and in some cases you may find that characters you thought were likeable turn out to be very flawed indeed. But for all that I found myself captivated by their lives and wondering how things were going to turn out for them.

Which is of course why it was so damn annoying that the book just ends. It’s not even a cliffhanger, it just ends.

There are clearly bigger elements being set up here. Corruption in the “Union”, Shanka (humanoid, apelike, goblin creatures) massing on the borders of the north; The Empire restive in the south and Eaters (people who have eaten men’s flesh) causing havoc for their own reasons.

None of this is resolved or even really clarified for us. It’s a big, epic, story and clearly you have to read the whole thing for it to make sense. But it’s a story I very much want to read all of now.