The First Law Trilogy by Joe Abercrombie

[Silverstar]

I've just finished reading it. While I think it's a really interesting concept and very well-written, for some reason, it just doesn't grab me particularly. It's the kind of book that I probably won't reread for a few years, at least.

I'm trying to puzzle out why it didn't grab me, considering how much love it gets on the board. I think, partly, I just didn't really like any of the characters, and I'm such a character-driven reader that this puts me off.

Other than that, I'm not sure. I really wanted to love it because it's so often held up as one of the best fantasy series published recently.

[Trinuviel]

I've just finished reading it. While I think it's a really interesting concept and very well-written, for some reason, it just doesn't grab me particularly. It's the kind of book that I probably won't reread for a few years, at least.

I'm trying to puzzle out why it didn't grab me, considering how much love it gets on the board. I think, partly, I just didn't really like any of the characters, and I'm such a character-driven reader that this puts me off.

Other than that, I'm not sure. I really wanted to love it because it's so often held up as one of the best fantasy series published recently.

This pretty much mirrors my own response to this series (I've only read the first two books). I bought it based on the online praise but was very underwhelmed by it. I don't mind unsympathetic characters but there's just something about the story that I found almost instantly forgettable. I read Before They Are Hanged about two months ago and can hardly recall the story-line, apart from the most basic outlines. It isn't something that usually happens to me so I'm still on the fence whether I should get the third book since I have the two first.

[Datepalm]

This pretty much mirrors my own response to this series (I've only read the first two books). I bought it based on the online praise but was very underwhelmed by it. I don't mind unsympathetic characters but there's just something about the story that I found almost instantly forgettable. I read Before They Are Hanged about two months ago and can hardly recall the story-line, apart from the most basic outlines. It isn't something that usually happens to me so I'm still on the fence whether I should get the third book since I have the two first.

I found the first book somewhat underwhelming as well, I think the plot both picks up a little and gets more intricate in the 2nd and 3rd. I didn't think an awful lot of it right when finishing either. It took a couple of days to sink in and I gradually grew to appreciate it more.

[Nerdanel]

I think the deep problem behind the series above all lesser flaws is that it's a character-based story without characters that are good enough to support it. Especially the supporting characters tend to be caricatures with a few exaggerated traits.

A few examples:

Terez:

- Beautiful and charming and perfect and a princess, OMG!

- Nasty, violent temper coupled with a sense of superiority to make it worse.

- Lesbian with zero interest in men.

Brother Longfoot:

- Talks a lot indeed.

- Talks a lot indeed about his many talents.

- Total coward.

- Good at navigating.

Harding Grim:

- Experienced warrior.

- Dependable companion.

- Talks very little.

Even the most important POV characters suffer from a version of this. I get the feeling of someone like Jezal doesn't have nearly enough depth for the amount of pages he's been given. As a result, he keeps repeating the things he's revealed about himself several times over. This wouldn't be a problem if this wasn't a character-based series, but it is.

[Errant Bard]

I think the First Law is not really anything extra-ordinary on its own, but for someone well read in the genre of Fantasy, it may have something more in the way it manages tropes that could earn it extra brownie points.

Either way, hype can kill a book. If you read it, remember that it is from a new author and don't expect a masterpiece. It should be surprising when it is good, above average or showing potential, not the other way around.

[Jacen]

Here comes the Wall o' Text!^TM

I’m re-reading the books for the first time, really enjoying it so far. I wrote this about Last Argument of Kings awhile ago but it covers the series as a whole. Still mostly holds true to how I feel, re-reading it.

SPOILER: First Law

- First off, LAOK was possibly the most depressing/cynical conclusion I've ever read in a fantasy novel. I'm still not sure how I feel about that-it really makes me ask myself the question: Do I want/need to have some sort of happy ending? Either way, it is a fresh approach in it’s grimness.

- When I started the first book I was almost disgusted how cliched the characters were, but as time went on Abercrombie was able to sufficiently twist the tropes and give the characters sufficient endearing qualities that I didn't care. In the words of Martin, originality is overrated.

- More on the ending.... Besides the bleakness of it, one thing that kind of irritated me was the...futility of it. What exactly was accomplished by all this? This was not really a climatic battle vs. Khalul, it was just one more battle leading up to some sort of epic conclusion in the future. The whole plot line was really just another turn of events for the major players, not the endgame which I was expecting. I would compare it to the quest for the Seed in the books, the crew of adventurers journeys to the other side of the freaking world only to discover...absolutely nothing. Twisting the tropes of fantasy is one thing, but is it possible to overdo it? As much as most of us hate fantasy-book clichés we also love them, to a degree. If you break all the rules is it even a fantasy novel anymore?

- What exactly is an Eater? Specifically, are they magic users themselves or do they just get a big evasion + hit points bonus? :P Can they cast spells like Bayaz? Why are the waxing in power while Bayaz and the Magi are on the wane? Magic is leaking out of the world, supposedly.

- I wish we got more info on the laws themselves. Why does eating human flesh give someone magical abilities? This is never explored, in fact the whole magic system is given scant coverage.

- How come nobody mentions or wonders at the fact that Bayaz and his fellow Magi apparently live for hundreds or thousands of years? This is all taken for granted and I would have liked more info on this.

- The biggest flaw in the books for me: I enjoyed the fast, character driven narrative (These books were good enough to make me stay up late at night tearing through the story, which I'm grateful for), but the (wait for it!) world building in this series is definitely sub-par. And yeah, I'm one of those people that likes a map and I want the author to have a 8000 year history of Gurkhul somewhere in the back of his mind. That brings up the whole tired and ugly worldbuilding vs. characters debate, which I'd like to avoid, but seriously take the Bakker books for example, you can tell that Bakker has spent ALOT of time thinking up his world and developing it. Bakker has a very developed backstory which provides and amazing (and more importantly credible) foundation for his characters and events to rest upon. I don't get that sense at all from Abercrombie, its just a generic fantasy world.

- Logen Ninefingers was the highlight of these books for me. Joe did a fantastic job with this character. At first glance he is the cliched Northern Barbarian Berserker type we've read about a thousand times before. But wait!- he's actually a sensitive, thoughtful guy with a nice, fatherly side to him. It’s funny how all his folk sayings and lines of thought are eventually taken up by most of the people he meets, all the while Logen is this flawed person himself. And thats the beauty of this character. For the first two books I really liked this guy, and I was willing to forgive him for his past transgressions. Yet in the third book, we start to hear from other characters who know the old Logen, we start to witness unforgivable transgressions (Tul, Crummock's Kid, almost the Dogman)...and then I finally realized that he was, in fact, truly an "Evil Fucker" in the words of Dow, yet also at the same time “The best man I know†according to Jezal. Now, that was an amazing trick that Abercrombie pulled off with my perceptions. And yet... I still like Logen. That is brilliant.

- Same thing to lesser extent with Bayaz. He seemed like the cranky old bastard wizard in the classic Gandalf (People forget that Gandalf was easily pissed off too) mold. Then by the third book we get to see "Bayaz Unplugged" and wow, just wow. I had no inkling he was that much of an ice cold bastard- yet it all makes sense. This again was a brilliant bit by Abercrombie. The Dark Lord isn't who we think he is, and wait a minute- he just won. Abercrombie also did a great job of invoking an emotional response from me as the reader- I haven't wanted a character to die this badly since Joffrey.

-Ferro was the worst POV character by far. Angry, scarred person…We’ve seen this before a million times, and done much better. For whatever reason her POV’s were a serious drag to read.

- The character I felt the most sympathy for was Jezal. He was the only character that seemed to have an upward progression, and I felt for him. He was honestly trying to be a better man, and in many cases he actually succeeded. Until, that is, we get to the epic beat down/harsh reality lesson from Bayaz at the end of LAOK. What a great scene btw. That was a crushing and brutal moment.

-And finally…I really like the paper this is printed on.

[Nerdanel]

Re: First Law and tropes, I think the series suffered from being roughly 2/3 serious drama and 1/3 parody of other fantasy from Tolkien to Goodkind. Ludicrously exaggerated personality traits are par for the course in parody, but I think the story was overall too serious and aiming for grim realism for that to work.

[Trinuviel]

I think that my problems with this series are two-fold: 1) I didn't find the characters compelling enough - after each book I simply found that I didn't really care enough about what happened to them for the story to hold my interest. 2) I guess I'm not that I'm not very well-read in traditional epic fantasy to recognize the play with the traditional fantasy tropes. I have a penchant for historical fantasy, steampunk and the more experimentally (both in subject-matter and style) inclined authors such as Elizabeth Bear, Patricia McKillip, le Guin, etc. Granted, I've always enjoyed Tolkien and have become a bigtime fan of Martin after discovering ASOIAF last year but I've never read Jordan, Goodkind and their ilk so I guess that a lot of Abercrombie's self-conscious play with the tropes just went right over my head.

[williamjm]

Granted, I've always enjoyed Tolkien and have become a bigtime fan of Martin after discovering ASOIAF last year but I've never read Jordan, Goodkind and their ilk so I guess that a lot of Abercrombie's self-conscious play with the tropes just went right over my head.

SPOILER: Vague spoilers for The First Law

I thought a lot of the referencing is of tropes that appear in Tolkien, some of the references seem directly based on LOTR - for example, I thought that the first battle in the canyon in LAOK seemed like a reference to Helm's Deep, with the slight parody that rather than a near-impregnable fortress the defenders just have a partly ruined wall. Then there is the quest, the super-powerful magical object, the manipulative wizard, the council of wizards, the hidden prince - all things that appear in LOTR. Of course, they also appear in plenty of other works but I don't think you need to be particularly well-read in the fantasy genre to have encountered these tropes.

[Silverstar]

I'm wondering whether I simply didn't read the books closely enough, or whether a lot of things aren't explained, so my slight confusion over things is deliberate. For example (I'll put it in spoiler text just in case it is a spoiler of sorts for anyone)

SPOILER: First Law Trilogy

What exactly is the Bloody Nine? Is it just Logan going apeshit and losing control of himself, or it is a completely separate part of his consciousness, or is it some kind of separate spirit being that takes him over at times, or what? Like I said, I might just be being dense about it, but I was never quite sure. It's something that kicked in for the first time when he lost his finger, is that right?

[delete this account pls]

Here comes the Wall o' Text!^TM

I’m re-reading the books for the first time, really enjoying it so far. I wrote this about Last Argument of Kings awhile ago but it covers the series as a whole. Still mostly holds true to how I feel, re-reading it.

SPOILER: First Law

The whole plot line was really just another turn of events for the major players, not the endgame which I was expecting. I would compare it to the quest for the Seed in the books, the crew of adventurers journeys to the other side of the freaking world only to discover...absolutely nothing. Twisting the tropes of fantasy is one thing, but is it possible to overdo it? As much as most of us hate fantasy-book clichés we also love them, to a degree. If you break all the rules is it even a fantasy novel anymore?

SPOILER: First Law

I think the fact that the entire Bayaz/Khalul confrontation was simply another battle in their long war plays into the whole larger theme of the cyclical nature of violence. Violence breeds violence, war breeds more war, until you find yourself trapped in an endless loop, just like Logen. In a way, Bayaz is as trapped as Logen was (is). There'll always be 'one last battle', there'll always be another enemy.

As for the Quest, I always figured it's importance was for the character development, rather than the quest itself. It's a character-driven trilogy after all. if you think about it from that stand point, the Quest is pretty damn important. It's because of the Quest that Jezal starts to change. Take the Seed as a symbol of Abercrombie's view on worldbuilding in general - it's not there, because it's the characters that are important :P

[delete this account pls]

I'm wondering whether I simply didn't read the books closely enough, or whether a lot of things aren't explained, so my slight confusion over things is deliberate. For example (I'll put it in spoiler text just in case it is a spoiler of sorts for anyone)

SPOILER: First Law Trilogy

What exactly is the Bloody Nine? Is it just Logan going apeshit and losing control of himself, or it is a completely separate part of his consciousness, or is it some kind of separate spirit being that takes him over at times, or what? Like I said, I might just be being dense about it, but I was never quite sure. It's something that kicked in for the first time when he lost his finger, is that right?

SPOILER: The Bloody Nine

It never reveals what the Bloody Nine is exactly, but it's definitely a seperate personlaity, because he doesn't recognise Tul Duru when he kills him. So at the least, Logen suffers multiple personality disorder. Some people have speculated that it's some sort of demon that possesses Logen, since he seems to have increased strength and stuff when he's the Bloody Nine.

I think it first popped up when Logen was just a youth, and he murdered a friend or something? And his father sent him away, which was how he linked up with Bethod in the first place. I can't remember exactly, been a while since I read it.

[aergern]

I liked this series well enough but it wasn't the most exciting series I've read in the last few years and I completely disagree with Joe that maps aren't needed .. they are. I'd give it a read .. it's not a waste of time at all.

[Imp]

I was sold as soon as I read the first Glokta PoV chapter. He's probably the darkest, funniest most fucked up character that I've read in years. Really jived with my (slightly twisted) sense of humour. He alone would've made the books for me, but I very much enjoyed the rest of the cast too, even if they did sometimes come across as slightly 1 dimensional (especially Ferro). The eventual mindfucks in the last book were just the icing on the cake. :thumbsup:

[Isis]

SPOILER: First Law

- More on the ending.... Besides the bleakness of it, one thing that kind of irritated me was the...futility of it. What exactly was accomplished by all this? This was not really a climatic battle vs. Khalul, it was just one more battle leading up to some sort of epic conclusion in the future. The whole plot line was really just another turn of events for the major players, not the endgame which I was expecting. I would compare it to the quest for the Seed in the books, the crew of adventurers journeys to the other side of the freaking world only to discover...absolutely nothing. Twisting the tropes of fantasy is one thing, but is it possible to overdo it? As much as most of us hate fantasy-book clichés we also love them, to a degree. If you break all the rules is it even a fantasy novel anymore?

SPOILER: FL

The futility IS the point.

[Chaldanya]

Erm. If the thread is about the series, I don't think it's out of line to suggest that spoilers are fine especially as already stated that there is a thread dedicated to each of the individual books.

N

[Jacen]

Yeah, we should make this a spoiler fest. If we are talking about a trilogy as a whole, it stands to reason that means one has read the trilogy.

[Datepalm]

Okay, spoilers here! Ahoy!

(giving this a go.)

It never reveals what the Bloody Nine is exactly, but it's definitely a seperate personlaity, because he doesn't recognise Tul Duru when he kills him. So at the least, Logen suffers multiple personality disorder. Some people have speculated that it's some sort of demon that possesses Logen, since he seems to have increased strength and stuff when he's the Bloody Nine.

I can't figure out what was the deal with Logan. (Given that the various fuckups and hypocricies of the characers were so well and meticulously done, It seems mean of me to chalk it up to authorial ineptitude) It seems a cop out of the conflict of the character, and also the whole subversion of the trope, (the rough loner...with a heart of gold. Not.) to make his "darker side" such a sperate entity he's not really responsible for.

[Nerdanel]

I think it was clear as day that Logen and the Bloody-Nine were not a same person. If Abercrombie intended them to be, he did it spectacularly badly.

My guess is that the young and stupid Logen invited the spirit known as the Bloody-Nine into his body in order to make himself into an unstoppable warrior, and that turned out to have drawbacks, even if Logen didn't initially care about them. I think over time Logen learned to be formidable on his own, but he was still just a human while the Bloody-Nine was not, and the spirit would automatically take over when Logen couldn't make it himself.

As a support, consider the case of Logen taking a spirit of fire inside of him and releasing it later in battle. It's an isolated incident without much relevance on anything, but I think it's in the story to reveal that Logen can do more with spirits than just talk to them, suggesting that it might be foreshadowing that will eventually be revealed as such in a sequel.

The trilogy left several sequel hooks, some of them quite blatant.

[Sheep the Evicted]

Wow, that's one hell of a good theory and im kicking myself for not making the connection already. I completely forgot about the fire spirit.

I used to think it was some sort of curse inflicted by Bayaz or perhaps one of the other Magi on Logan as a kid. What Bayaz did to Jezal at the tournament was extremely similar to the whole Bloody Nine episode so Bayaz obviously knows how to induce it artificially. Maybe at the same time that Bayaz was planting the seeds of noble looking bastard kings he was also building himself an indestructible barbarian warrior.