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 barbarian with a rough code of honor) and subverts them. They have flaws. Not Hollywood flaws, superficial quirks, but some pretty massive defects. "They're not people I'd want to be in the same room with" seems to be a frequent complaint. I can understand that, I probably wouldn't SURVIVE being in the same room with them. But what they are is interesting, in a way that is unfortunately uncommon in a lot of recent fantasy.

The action--and there's a lot of it--was also pretty exhilarating. Visceral in the truest, chunkiest sense of the word. Combat is an ugly, desperate thing, and if it takes groin-kicking and eye-gouging to get our heroes through a fight, well, those are tactics they don't think twice about adopting.

However, while I was thoroughly engrossed by the characters, their exploits, and the presentation, I was still left vaguely disappointed by the end of the book. I considered knocking down my rating another star, but in the end I went with the higher rating because this book was such a rush to read. The biggest issue that this book has is that it's the first volume of a trilogy. For marketing reasons, fantasy publishers just love trilogies, so everything has to be drawn out into several installments. I enjoy revisiting interesting characters and settings for further adventures, but it's disappointing when a book fails to stand on its own. This volume is a third of the story. The plot is basically introducing the characters and getting them in position, and while I loved the ride, it bothered me when I realized that this was 530 pages of Abercrombie taking out the pieces and setting up the chess board. It's clear that he's headed in an awesome direction, and the author has earned enough of my trust for me to add the rest of his work to my to-buy list, but it's disappointing that this book wasn't more self-contained.

Still, my primary objection is something that probably doesn't bother most fantasy readers. I'd recommend this for fans of George R.R. Martin, David Gemmell (the closest example I can think of), and Robert E. Howard. (If only Abercrombie had Howard's ability to tell epic tales succinctly!) If you like clean-smelling fantasy with honor and romance, you're going to have a bad time.