The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie
My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars
Series: The First Law (Book #1 of 3), First Law World (Book, #1 of 10)
Genre: Fantasy, Epic Fantasy, Grimdark fantasy
Published: 4th May 2006 by Gollancz (UK) & 8th September 2015 by Orbit (US)
Before anyone gasped in surprise that I’ve not read this excellent grimdark entry by Joe Abercrombie, allow me to provide a little backstory.
The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Series: The First Law (Book #1 of 3), First Law World (Book, #1 of 10)
Genre: Fantasy, Epic Fantasy, Grimdark fantasy
Pages: 544 pages (UK paperback edition)
Published: 4th May 2006 by Gollancz (UK) & 8th September 2015 by Orbit (US)
The Blade Itself was my first entry into a grimdark fantasy novel that I highly enjoyed; on this reread, I loved it even more.
“Once you’ve got a task to do, it’s better to do it than live with the fear of it.”
Back in October 2016, the only reason I stumbled upon this bloody marvelous trilogy was that, as many other readers did, I was looking for a reading experience that could offer me the kind of unpredictability and morally ambiguous characters that the Game of Thrones TV show did. I haven’t read A Song of Ice and Fire back then, fans of Game of Thrones weren’t so divisive in their opinion yet too, but suffice to say I was surprised that I got what I was looking for in this series, and more. I’ve read many grimdark novels since then, and it’s baffling that I haven’t encountered many grimdark characters with characterizations level as high as Abercrombie. Seeing that Abercrombie’s newest novel in the world of First Law is coming out in a month, I figured it’s about time for me to actually refresh my memory and check whether it was my nostalgia goggles playing trick on me; it wasn’t, I actually loved my reread experience more than my first read. …
The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
The Blade Itself is exactly why I believe in second chances. When I first read this book four years ago, I had very little adult fantasy under my belt. I had read Elantris, Mistborn, A Song of Ice and Fire, and The Kingkiller Chronicle. That’s pretty much it. I think I just wasn’t mentally prepared for something like The Blade Itself. Even ASoIaF, by far the darkest of the fantasy novels I had read up to that point, had a number of characters who were mostly moral. Even if I wasn’t sure how long said characters would live, I knew that there was good even in this dark world. Then Abercrombie entered. While even on my first reading I appreciated how fleshed out and unique his characters were, there was a part of me that was horrified to find a core of darkness within those I had thought were basically good. My little brain didn’t cope well with that.
“Every man has his excuses, and the more vile the man becomes, the more touching the story has to be. What is my story now, I wonder?”