Joe AbercrombieFantasy · Fiction·b. 1974
The Blade Itself
Synopsis
The Union teeters on the brink of war with the Northmen and the Gurkish Empire, but in its gilded capital of Adua three very different lives are about to collide. Logen Ninefingers—the Bloody-Nine, most feared warrior in the North—finds himself adrift after his crew is scattered, and is reluctantly drawn south by the scheming First Mage, Bayaz.
Jezal dan Luthar is a vain and comfortable young officer who cares chiefly about his appearance and his tournament scores, completely unaware that the world he inhabits is already shifting under his boots.
Sand dan Glokta was once the Union's finest swordsman; now he is a broken, tortured inquisitor who extracts confessions for the Closed Council and has long since stopped believing in anything.
Set in a secondary world where the last war against the demonic Shanka left deep scars, The Blade Itself subverts classic high-fantasy conventions at every turn. Heroes are compromised, villains have reasons, and the institutions men fight to protect are no better than what threatens them.
Abercrombie introduces a cast of extraordinary moral complexity—each perspective honest about its own ugliness, each voice darkly funny—and sets them on a collision course whose full reckoning comes in the two volumes that follow. This first volume is largely a novel of characters and world-building, moving deliberately to establish a world in which cynicism is the only honest response.
Collected in
How it reads
Prose complexity 7/10
Content warnings (5)
ViolenceGraphic ViolenceTortureGoreWar
Readers say (1)Slow · Dense · Dark · Funny · Morally Grey
Readers flagged (1)
Violence
- I can think of few other books that I nearly quit reading, asking myself why in the world everyone else thinks this is so great, only to end up really enjoying it by the end.<br><br>If you're wondering, I almost quit at these lines:<br><br><blockquote><details><summary>Spoiler</summary>"'I would be the last to deny it. A fine job.' He spun suddenly around, the tails of his white coat snapping, his face twisted into a brutal snarl. “A fine job of dodging the King’s taxes!” he screamed. There was a collective gasp."</details></blockquote><br><br>I am no literary snob, but this entire section was emblematic of my issues with this book up until this point. While I was beginning to enjoy the characters, I just couldn't get past the writing. It was downright BAD at times. Just super cheesy dialogue, and the scene where that quote came from would be better found in a Simpson's version of a trial, except, even worse.<br><br>But...<br><br>I kept on. Figuring I owed it to myself after seeing so much praise for it, to at least give it the entire book. And while I would give the first 2/3rd's of the book a solid 1.5 stars, the last third was a solid 4. Still some issues with the writing, but at least it started going somewhere. I read someone else's review somewhere stating that this book really felt like more of a prologue than the first book in a series, and I couldn't agree more. <br><br>I like the main characters. Except for Jezal. God, I hate Jezal. And I am looking forward to continuing the series. I just hope that the writing gets better with the pacing that clearly improved in the latter third of this first book.
- More like 2,5/5...<br><br>I made the mistake to read The Blade Itself just after reading Steven Erikson's Toll the Hounds, the 8th installment of Malazan Book of the Fallen, and the experience was like watching a high school basketball game after an NBA final: the former is not that bad per se, but the comparison is devastating. <br><br>The key word in describing this book is "forced"; while reading it, I had almost constantly the feeling that the writer knew "too" well what kind of story he wanted to tell and what kind of plot mechanisms he would employ in telling it, but at the same time the way he was telling it was trully too obvious (and with too much exposition for my taste). And here I am not talking about the need of more plot twists, but mainly about the way he builds his characters (i.e. "this one will do this to make him look arrogant," "the other one will do that to make him look ruthless" etc.), the things that we can clearly see coming but are shown as great surprises, and the convergence that happens by the end of the book. <br><br>Nevertheless, the book had its moments, especially when we are given glimpses of a greater scheme that looms over this particular world or when we get more about its lore and mostly when we meet some of its secondary characters. It's an easy reading, and although I can't say I root for most of the main characters, there are a few interesting ones among them.<br><br> All thing said, as of now I haven't yet decided if I want to read the next one or not.
- Przyjemna pozycja fantasy, przy której jednak przesadnie się nie emocjonowałem. Historia spisana jest ciekawie, intryguje i utrzymuje zainteresowanie przez kolejne strony, ale nie ma tego przyciągania. Czytałem, aby poznać całą historię, a przynajmniej część ze względu na to, że to 1 tom serii, ale nie miałem parcia na szybkie odkrycie wszystkich kart. Wbrew powszechnym opiniom w książce nie ma również zbyt wielu wulgaryzmów, brutalności i krwawych walk jest również jak na lekarstwo - po zapowiedziach spodziewałem się czegoś więcej i trochę mi tych elementów zabrakło. Mimo to jestem zainteresowany kolejnymi tomami i pozwaniem dalszych losów bohaterów - zwłaszcza Inkwizytora, który przejawiał największe pokłady wspominanej brutalności i którego wątek póki co wydaje się bardziej interesujący od Logana , chociaż te po mału się ze sobą splatają. Jeżeli przeczytaliście wszystko co topowe z Fantasy i szukacie dobrej pozycji na kilka kolejnych godzin to spokojnie można usiąść do Ostrza.
- <div>Strong finish. Wow, and to think this is the weakest book.</div>
- What a terrific start!