Select language, opens an overlay

Comment

Dec 13, 2016isaachar rated this title 4.5 out of 5 stars
When I started 'The Blade Itself', I thought that it was a good substitution for George R.R. Martin's 'A Song of Ice and Fire' series. Wow was I wrong! The 'First Law' series, in my opinion, is equal to or better than Martin's more popular epic. Without revealing too much about the overall series, I thought the The Blade Itself was amazing. I read Abercrombie's 'Shattered Sea' trilogy before this book and was expecting something similar, but this book delivers a very different type of story. The book delivers highly on swordplay, sorcery and statecraft. It also provides a good lore background to the world and its history, which have interesting analogies to our own. It doesn't fall into "high adventure" in my opinion, but fits squarely into the "epic world building" category of fantasy. The characters initially seem like common tropes in fantasy, until you learn more about their past and intentions. I think Bayaz may be the most interesting and complex Wizard-type character I have read about in any fantasy novel. He initially seems like a 'Merlin' figure, intent on guiding our primary protagonist with wise counsel and a bit of magic. That perception slowly erodes as the story goes on. Logen Ninefinger's story gets better as you read more about him. At first it's easy to see him as a character similar to Robert Howard's Conan, a honorable warrior-barbarian. As you learn more about who he is, and why he is in the situation that we meet him in, we realize he is not what he believes himself to be. Rudd Threetrees and Ninefinger's former band of 'Named Men' provide a lot of the humor to the story, and they have their own interesting history. Jezel Luthar was never interesting or likable, but the build up of his story is important and pays in the sequels. I found his friend and rival, Captain West's story to also be a bit dull compared to the other characters. That said, his perspective is required to move the story forward in a lot of places. Finally we have the brilliant and broken Inspector Glokta, who's story is interesting, but does not 'kick in' until the following sequels. All in all, it was well worth the read. The story gets better with the sequels, spinoffs and prequel.