Joe Abercrombie: The Collected Works (and in what order to read them) SPOILERS

[Darth Richard II]

It did. In America at least.

[The hairy bear]

I'm very happy with this progress report. If he has already drafted one sixth of the trilogy, Joe must be much more advanced in its overall design than I thought.

The idea of the circle of the world moving "rapidly forward into the turmoil of early industrialisation" makes for an interesting background. As we saw in The Heroes, Bayaz is one of the forces pushing for it developing new weapons to fight Khalul. But it may be a short sighted move, because it seems that in a fully industrialized world the magis might lose their hold.

18 hours ago, Let's Get Kraken said:

So Abercrombie's next trilogy will likely be finished before The Doors of Stone comes out too then.

Abercrombie makes all the other authors look bad. I'm afraid he'll soon receive an unpleasant visit from the union guys...

[Werthead]

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If he has already drafted one sixth of the trilogy

One-ninth

ETA: Nope, you're right. 1.5 sections. Maths fail.

 

[williamjm]

10 hours ago, The hairy bear said:

Abercrombie makes all the other authors look bad. I'm afraid he'll soon receive an unpleasant visit from the union guys...

He is releasing them at a good rate but he's not as prolific as the likes of Brandon Sanderson or Adrian Tchaikovsky who seems to average at least two books a year.

[Elliot]

I just finished "The Blade Itself" and am debating whether to continue with the trilogy. There are aspects I like (the grittiness, the Glokta character, and how engaging the writing is), but I was also bothered by the cartoonishness of some characters, and what I saw as sloppy world-building. I'm hoping I can get some info about whether the specific type of stuff I didn't like gets better. A few examples:

(1) When Longfoot and Logen are traveling through the ghetto and Longfoot pulls out a purse of coins "with a floruish" and starts loudly jingling the coins, completely oblivious to the danger. He even asks "What's that?" cluelessly when Logen hints at the danger. The problem is that Longfoot is supposed to be one of the most worldly and well traveled people alive. When your job is that of an expert "Navigator", having common sense about whether waving gold around in the ghetto is dangerous is one thing that you'd be expected to also be an expert in. It goes hand and hand with traveling. It seemed unbelievable to me that Abercrombie would make Longfoot so foolish about safety, just so he could produce an action scene. Reading this scene completely took me out of the story.

(2) Similar to the above, a lot of the writing is really cartoon-like and exaggerated. For instance when it's revealed that Jezal's favorite part of his day is literally when he stares at himself in the mirror. I've seen people suggest that Abercrombie is intentionally doing this because he wants to play with tropes, and maybe there's some level on which what he's doing here is really clever, but as a reader this just makes me unable to imagine the characters as actual people and makes reading the book less fun.

(3) When Glokta is talking to the scientists and asks about magic, and he gets the response "You must understand that we are a scientific institution. The practice of magic, so called, would be most… inappropriate.” This doesn't ring true in a world where magic is as widely known to be real as it is in this book. Science is about everything in the nature of reality. Apparently even though magic is known to be a real thing in this world, the scientific community treats it as "off limits" because Ambercrombie wants there to be some conflict between magic and science. This seems like an aspect of the world that wasn't thought through very carefully.

(4) At Jezal's party right before Bayaz goes to the House of the Maker to open it, Sult believes he has Bayaz where he wants him because he's going to force Bayaz to try and fail to open the House. Sult is threatened by Bayaz and really wants to discredit him. This is super important to Sult. The first problem is that Sult allows Bayaz to pick the witnesses to his attempt to enter the house. The second and much larger problem is that after it became widely known that Bayaz was going to try to enter the House of the Maker at a certain time, which seems like a big deal before, suddenly no one really seemed to care about it. The 4 people involved in the demonstration just went to the House, came back, and everyone went on with their lives. Given the rest of the story, the result of this test should have been of huge interest throughout the city. Yet no one made any effort to watch what happened or try to get Jezal or Glokta to talk about their experience afterward. This seemed super unbelievable to me.

These are just a few of many examples. In general, it felt like Abercrombie was sort of making stuff up as he went along and not really thinking through the implications of how different aspects of the world would fit together. Am I totally off here? Am I not getting what Abercrombie is trying to do? If people agree that this was a problem, does Abercrombie get better at world-building in the later books?

[Argonath Diver]

I think everyone seems to agree that the first book is the weakest of his writing - though I still enjoyed the crap out of it. I'm not sure if you're going to enjoy the next books, either, simply because it seems like you just didn't have a very good time reading this one, Nothing wrong with that, to each his own. 

It seems to me that the scenes you mention could be a bit silly taken one by one and analyzed, as so. Without spoiling anything, it's hard to really talk about the next two books. You already know they bring down fantasy tropes. You've seen the fantasy-pulpy tropes established, and weren't entertained. Perhaps the second book, as things get more complicated, you will be? It's hard to say. Sometimes we just don't like a very popular author. I have tried and abandoned multiple Daniel Abraham series, and haven't enjoyed any of them, despite overwhelmingly glowing praise in these parts, and my personal like of most of the authors often recommended here.

That said, I just loved the last hundred or so pages of the trilogy so, so much that I hope you do finish it. The stand-alones after the trilogy are buckets of fun, as well.

ps I have rolled my eyes each time at that Longfoot scene, but I laughed at the Jezal narcissism.

[Jo498]

I think the cartoonishness is part of the appeal... this is not really getting better (or more precisely, there are always going to be several *very* cartoonish characters in all the books, maybe Best Served Cold and Heroes are worst in this respect although they are highly regarded for other qualities), so if this bothers you... I don't recall the loopholes you mention and I don't think there are much worse here than elsewhere. Most of the worldbuilding is very generic (it's actually somewhat better in Shattered Sea, I think) and they are many unrealistic things. They are still entertaining page turners, I think, but I doubt I will revisit them any time soon (again, this is just par for the course for most fantasy, so not at all meant as strong criticism).

[Maithanet]

9 hours ago, Elliot said:

(1) When Longfoot and Logen are traveling through the ghetto and Longfoot pulls out a purse of coins "with a floruish" and starts loudly jingling the coins, completely oblivious to the danger. He even asks "What's that?" cluelessly when Logen hints at the danger. The problem is that Longfoot is supposed to be one of the most worldly and well traveled people alive. When your job is that of an expert "Navigator", having common sense about whether waving gold around in the ghetto is dangerous is one thing that you'd be expected to also be an expert in. It goes hand and hand with traveling. It seemed unbelievable to me that Abercrombie would make Longfoot so foolish about safety, just so he could produce an action scene. Reading this scene completely took me out of the story.

Longfoot is definitely meant to be a bit cartoonish, with the idea that he is a good navigator but actually a complete dolt.  If I remember correctly, he gets toned down a bit in the second book.

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(2) Similar to the above, a lot of the writing is really cartoon-like and exaggerated. For instance when it's revealed that Jezal's favorite part of his day is literally when he stares at himself in the mirror. I've seen people suggest that Abercrombie is intentionally doing this because he wants to play with tropes, and maybe there's some level on which what he's doing here is really clever, but as a reader this just makes me unable to imagine the characters as actual people and makes reading the book less fun.

I don't even remember this passage.  It's just a bit of outlandish character development thrown in, no big deal. 

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(3) When Glokta is talking to the scientists and asks about magic, and he gets the response "You must understand that we are a scientific institution. The practice of magic, so called, would be most… inappropriate.” This doesn't ring true in a world where magic is as widely known to be real as it is in this book. Science is about everything in the nature of reality. Apparently even though magic is known to be a real thing in this world, the scientific community treats it as "off limits" because Ambercrombie wants there to be some conflict between magic and science. This seems like an aspect of the world that wasn't thought through very carefully.

I'm not sure the practice of magic is widely known to be real, or something that still happens.  At the very least I get the impression most people haven't witnessed it, and whenever people encounter it they are almost invariably unprepared.  Sult certainly seems VERY skeptical that Bayaz could perform any magic at all when he was goading him in front of the entire court.  That gives the impression that plenty of people think that magic is nothing more than charlatan's tricks.  A scientist could reasonably think that magic has left the world. 

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(4) At Jezal's party right before Bayaz goes to the House of the Maker to open it, Sult believes he has Bayaz where he wants him because he's going to force Bayaz to try and fail to open the House. Sult is threatened by Bayaz and really wants to discredit him. This is super important to Sult. The first problem is that Sult allows Bayaz to pick the witnesses to his attempt to enter the house. The second and much larger problem is that after it became widely known that Bayaz was going to try to enter the House of the Maker at a certain time, which seems like a big deal before, suddenly no one really seemed to care about it. The 4 people involved in the demonstration just went to the House, came back, and everyone went on with their lives. Given the rest of the story, the result of this test should have been of huge interest throughout the city. Yet no one made any effort to watch what happened or try to get Jezal or Glokta to talk about their experience afterward. This seemed super unbelievable to me.

I assume that Sult got a debrief from Glokta about what happened in the House of the Maker.  But it wasn't a terribly important scene, so Abercrombie didn't bother wasting pages telling the audience what happened in the HotM when they already saw it a couple chapters ago.  And for why it wasn't a "big deal" around the city, Sult didn't want it to be a big deal because Bayaz made him look like a fool.  So he did what he could to make sure things are proceeding normally, without it being a big deal. 

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These are just a few of many examples. In general, it felt like Abercrombie was sort of making stuff up as he went along and not really thinking through the implications of how different aspects of the world would fit together. Am I totally off here? Am I not getting what Abercrombie is trying to do? If people agree that this was a problem, does Abercrombie get better at world-building in the later books?

Most people agree that book 2 is stronger than book 1, although I wouldn't expect it to be vastly better.  My main complaint with book 1 was more the amateurish prose than the worldbuilding. 

[SeanF]

On ‎8‎/‎31‎/‎2016 at 4:30 AM, Elliot said:

I just finished "The Blade Itself" and am debating whether to continue with the trilogy. There are aspects I like (the grittiness, the Glokta character, and how engaging the writing is), but I was also bothered by the cartoonishness of some characters, and what I saw as sloppy world-building. I'm hoping I can get some info about whether the specific type of stuff I didn't like gets better. A few examples:

 

(3) When Glokta is talking to the scientists and asks about magic, and he gets the response "You must understand that we are a scientific institution. The practice of magic, so called, would be most… inappropriate.” This doesn't ring true in a world where magic is as widely known to be real as it is in this book. Science is about everything in the nature of reality. Apparently even though magic is known to be a real thing in this world, the scientific community treats it as "off limits" because Ambercrombie wants there to be some conflict between magic and science. This seems like an aspect of the world that wasn't thought through very carefully.

 

The reader knows that magic is a reality.  The inhabitants of Adua regard it as mere superstition.

[Andrew Gilfellon]

On ‎31‎/‎08‎/‎2016 at 4:30 AM, Elliot said:

 

(2) Similar to the above, a lot of the writing is really cartoon-like and exaggerated. For instance when it's revealed that Jezal's favorite part of his day is literally when he stares at himself in the mirror. I've seen people suggest that Abercrombie is intentionally doing this because he wants to play with tropes, and maybe there's some level on which what he's doing here is really clever, but as a reader this just makes me unable to imagine the characters as actual people and makes reading the book less fun.

 

I think you will find that the whole paragraph about Jezal admiring himself in the mirror is foreshadowing for something in book 2

[stonebender]

TFL feeling too "cartoonish" was one of my issues with the series.  That and it felt like the whole thing was overly dependent on existing as one big snarky jab at traditional/quest fantasy.  Although my expectations going into these books were probably way too high given that I saw a few people describe them as being along the lines of Stover's stuff. 

[Darth Richard II]

I find the complaint about the prose bizarre. Joe is one of if not the best In my opinion in changing the prose to fit the POV. You can pick up any of his books and read a page and know exactly who the pov character is(assuming you've read it before).

 

[Corvinus85]

Finally got around to reading Sharp Ends. I enjoyed all the stories, but my favorite were the Shev/Javre stories, as well everything to do with the North. I really hope the next trilogy heavily features that duo. And it makes me sad that Joe killed off Whirrun in The Heroes.

Also having re-read Best Served Cold before Sharp Ends, I wish there was more material to read between Murcatto becoming the Duchess of Talins and her son becoming the king of Styria. That particular short story hinted at a lot of interesting events.

 

[The hairy bear]

On 27/9/2016 at 11:14 PM, Corvinus said:

Also having re-read Best Served Cold before Sharp Ends, I wish there was more material to read between Murcatto becoming the Duchess of Talins and her son becoming the king of Styria. That particular short story hinted at a lot of interesting events.

I found that the most interesting part of the few bits of information revealed in this story was that Monza had been able to defeat the Union's army three times in the field. After the severe casualties in the battle of Adua, the harsh campaign in the North and three defeats in Styria, the army of the Union must be in a sorry state both in terms of numbers and leadership (When Mitterick is the best marshal you can find, you're in trouble). I wonder if this will play a part in the new trilogy.

[Corvinus85]

11 minutes ago, The hairy bear said:

I found that the most interesting part of the few bits of information revealed in this story was that Monza had been able to defeat the Union's army three times in the field. After the severe casualties in the battle of Adua, the harsh campaign in the North and three defeats in Styria, the army of the Union must be in a sorry state both in terms of numbers and leadership (When Mitterick is the best marshal you can find, you're in trouble). I wonder if this will play a part in the new trilogy.

Yeah, that caught my eye, and I too hope that it plays into the next trilogy. I'm not sure how severe where the Gurkish losses at Adua, but at this point another Gurkish invasion might break the Union. However, we've seen in The Heroes that Bayaz is interested in developing new weapons, so perhaps the Union is aiming to replace its numerical losses with technological advancements.

Personally I hope Monza gives the Gurkish a good beating or two, just to level the field.

[SeanF]

15 minutes ago, Corvinus said:

Yeah, that caught my eye, and I too hope that it plays into the next trilogy. I'm not sure how severe where the Gurkish losses at Adua, but at this point another Gurkish invasion might break the Union. However, we've seen in The Heroes that Bayaz is interested in developing new weapons, so perhaps the Union is aiming to replace its numerical losses with technological advancements.

Personally I hope Monza gives the Gurkish a good beating or two, just to level the field.

Monza has no reason to love the Union, but I doubt if she'd be happy to see the Gurkish overrun Midderland.

The Union also has a huge population, and its victories in the North, and at Adua must make the Gurkish wary about another invasion.

Given that the new trilogy will focus on the next generation, I expect King Jappo to be a POV.  I wonder how he gets on with his mother.

[Astromech]

2 hours ago, SeanF said:

Monza has no reason to love the Union, but I doubt if she'd be happy to see the Gurkish overrun Midderland.

The Union also has a huge population, and its victories in the North, and at Adua must make the Gurkish wary about another invasion.

Given that the new trilogy will focus on the next generation, I expect King Jappo to be a POV.  I wonder how he gets on with his mother.

Hopefully, not as well as Uncle Benna did.

[Corvinus85]

4 minutes ago, Astromech said:

Hopefully, not as well as Uncle Benna did.

OK, on that subject:

1) It's interesting that Monza named her son after her father, and not her brother. I think she may have been advised not to name him after Benna, or she herself finally saw the light about Benna.

2) I personally don't believe that Monza had sex with her brother. Did Joe confirm this? I think it was just rumors that Benna spread because he was that big of a douche and sociopath. 

[Corvinus85]

15 minutes ago, Let's Get Kraken said:

Bayaz also still has the Seed.

He can't really use it without someone like Ferro.

[Ded As Ned]

Help me settle a debate...  How do you pronounce Euz?  Kingdoms hang in the balance.

Summon author!?!