The Blade Itself

I should start this review out by saying I'm not anti-trilogy. There are some trilogies that I absolutely adore. Robin Hobb's Farseer books, for example, are a neat little trilogy within a ...nonalogy? I don't know how many there are now. The point is that both the trilogy and the individual books stand on their own as novels within a larger setting.

When I finished The Blade Itself, I felt like I'd just read 400 pages of exposition, and now the story could begin. It was a huge let down. I got to know all the characters very well, but every piece of action was either part of the set-up for the next book or just a diversion. I didn't feel invested in any of the story.

This isn't to say that the characters themselves aren't interesting. Abercrombie brings together a very colorful cast, and he paints each one vividly if somewhat stereotypically. He seems to be using the stereotypes to highlight how each character breaks away from them, though, and I'm sure in further books we get to explore that. The problem is that this book falls rather flat on its own without those other books.

Logen Ninefingers is a reformed barbarian, and his inner commentary is some of the best parts of this book. I like how non-barbaric his internal monologue is, particularly his catch phrase. He doesn't really have any motivations in the story, though, and always just seems to be looking for a way to make time pass faster. I appreciate that he's not wrapped up in a plot for vengeance or any other such cliche. He's just trying to stay alive for one more day.

Glokta is similarly fascinating for entirely different reasons. Here is a fop forced into barbarism, a foil to Logen and possibly foreshadowing what may one day (or one book) happen to Jezal. Abercrombie is extremely good at describing pain and how a human being lives with pain. Glokta's chapters always made me think about the physical limitations of human bodies, about how much people can actually take. I looked forward to these chapters most of all.

The other characters didn't really move me very much. Jezal seems like a character waiting for a later book to develop. His relationship with Ardee is probably supposed to show me his human side, but I really couldn't bring myself to care about him. Bayaz is cliche enough though his actions at the end of the story made him a lot more interesting just in time for the book to be over. Ferro should be interesting to me, but we just don't spend enough time with her. I like that her focus doesn't waver, but she didn't get enough chapters to make me care to any significant degree. The same goes for Dogman and the barbarians, West, Longfoot, and all the other people who merited a couple of scant chapters in the middle of the main story.

Speaking of which, there's very little story going on, more like a string of character introductions with some fight scenes thrown in. It reminds me a bit of Ian Tregillis' first installment in his Milkweed Tryptych in that I ended without really known why I'd been there at all. “Bitter Seeds” bothered me because he left so many dangling plotlines, though, and this book because it hardly started any at all.

Two stars seems a little harsh because the writing isn't terrible, but I'd give it 2.5. The world-building is thorough and Abercrombie really understands how to write a fight scene. I just ended it feeling so unfinished without much motivation to dive into the next book. To me, that means it fails as a novel even if the trilogy succeeds in the end. I have the rest of the series, and maybe I'll go back someday and see if the plot gets rolling, but not right away. I definitely want something more concise and peaceful after this one.