The First Law

Last year I became a huge fan of Joe Abercrombie's fantasy series The First Law, which is presently comprised of a trilogy, followed by the semi-stand alone revenge tale Best Served Cold, and in a matter of weeks the war story The Heroes. He's also just signed a deal to write four more books set in the same world.

If you want something fresh and like your fiction extremely gritty, I can't recommend it highly enough. If you've read them already, here's the place for discussion.

I just finished the trilogy a few weeks ago and Best Served Cold a few days ago. It's so gleeful in its incredible grimdarkness that I can't help loving it.

The end of Last Argument Of Kings had a big effect on my opinion of the trend of gritty fantasy as a whole, because it convinced me that it's possible to "stick the landing"; that is to say, give the story an appropriately dark ending. The problem with the whole subgenre is that it still has to use certain conventions of high fantasy in order to deconstruct them.

For example, if A Song Of Ice And Fire ended with Dany, the rightful heir, showing up, claiming her throne, and ending the era of brutality, it would fits the trappings of fantasy the story bears, but would undermine the mood that defines the series. And if it subverted that fantasy trope by having everyone die and the bad guys win, it would fit the mood but is not satisfying to the reader.

The ending of The First Law was quite possibly the most awful "happy ending" I've ever read. Best of all, on the surface it synced up perfectly with the "cliche" fantasy ending: the dashing hero becomes king and marries a beautiful princess, The Cavalry arrive on time, the wise wizard uses the MacGuffin to save the day and then departs never to be seen again, and they make peace with the barbarian king from the Grim Up North and defeat the uncivilized hordes from the south. To the average citizen of the Union or to someone who reads a summary of the series, it's a fairytale ending, while to the reader who knows the details, it's incredibly bleak. The payoff was phenomenal.

It gave me hope that A Song Of Ice And Fire and other similar as-yet-unfinished series in this subgenre of fantasy can also find that balance when it's time to end.

edited 15th Jan '11 12:10:26 PM by Treblain

Absolutely. To everything. I've seen people extremely dissatisfied with the end of the trilogy, which I can't relate to at all. It's an incredibly unique conclusion, for all of those reasons.

I started rereading The Blade Itself today, since I want to be completely refreshed for The Heroes. Oh Glokta, how I adore everything about you.

^^Yes, I agree. He deserves a lot of credit for pulling off an ending like that, so well. I also thought the ending of Best Served Cold was great, if not as dark. It was an ending that promised More to Come w/o being a cliff hanger.

^Abercrombie has a real talent for managing reader expectations. And then betraying them. Hurts so good.

Glokta is a fantastic character. I recently had a chance to sympathize w/him after hurting my back earlier this month.

edited 25th Jan '11 12:20:57 AM by MildGuy

1/4 through The Heroes, and it's surprisingly meh. But then, war novels definitely aren't my type of thing. Still, credit to Joe for trying to experiment with different genres while retaining his recognizable style. Still miss Gallows Humor a la The First Law. Both following books are noticeably lacking in this regard, IMHO.

edited 31st Jan '11 2:01:25 PM by FurryFury

The Heroes is out now, but I'm too deep in my Must Read pile to take time out for it.

I liked the FL trilogy and Best Served Cold equally, if for different reasons. I've found too few good revenge stories, and BSC really hit the spot. Plus, I like the dark humor I found in all the books.

BSC also had a excellent gay anti-villain. Don't see too many of them either.

Yeah, Ganmark was fantastic.

I started The Heroes a couple of days ago, about 2/3 through it now. Pretty excellent so far. I don't love the core cast of characters quite as much as those from the trilogy or the gang from Best Served Cold, but it's so tightly written that everything still really works. And there are a couple of chapters where Abercrombie uses character perspective to show what's going on across the entire battlefield in a way that's nothing short of brilliant.

Still haven't read Heroes yet, but I'm already dying to read the next book.

Joe just posted a picture on his blog showing a few of his study materials for the new project: http://www.joeabercrombie.com/2011/03/01/can-you-tell-what-it-is-yet/

I wonder how many characters will die via cougar attack.

Edit: and by "just" I mean several days ago, naturally.

edited 5th Mar '11 11:17:52 PM by MildGuy

I'm about halfway through Best Served Cold right now, and am loving it.

Found The Heroes at the book store. Thought it was stand alone so I read it.

I really enjoyed it. I've been trying to stay away from grimdark fantasy for a while now, but if the rest of the books are like this count me interested.

Well, since this got necroed i'll just add that i LOVED this series, will read the 2 standalones soon. I haven't read a fantasy series since grade school but this one hooked me. My opinion is that the second book is the best. Vitari and Glokta are 2 of my favourite characters in any series.

Ah, Glotka, a character whom I love. Rare is the time when a crippled character is a main character, successful in life. All too often they are to be pitied and used as gods and banners.

But Glotka deserves Black line hell in deed - a wretched torturer, killer, etc. Not one whom I want to be like, but an inspiration indeed.

edited 21st Jan '12 5:45:02 AM by terrkerr

In most fantasy stories Glotka would easily be one of the main villains. In the first law he's a weird kind of hero. Its a crazy series.

I didn't read more fantasy since A Song Of Ice And Fire and I'm thinking about picking up this...

He is a villain protagonist, our Glotka. More possessed of conscience perhaps, but since it rarely binds him, he is rarely better than any other torturer.

Nonsense, he's an honourable hero struggling valiantly against the series' true Big Bad, stairs.

lol; Indeed, but he is blessed in not having to deal with the even worse future horror from beyond the stars: personal elevators with combination passwords!

When I read the series I couldn't shake the fact that Glokta is basically House.

Blazed my way through the first two books i nthe trilogy, and I must say I really like it.

Maybe its because how pitch black everything is, but it's pretty easy for me to root for al lthe protagonists so far, tortuers, murderers, prejudiced racist assholes they often are. Maybe its because the Heroes is even more black.

Gotta say, these books need more love. Some of the finest character development I've ever come across, deconstructs tropes left right and centre, and does it in such a way that you can't help but love him for it. The first book presents a deliciously colourful cast, a crapsack world, but with so much character and wit that you can't help but grin. After that, Joe flexes his story muscles, and everything starts to fall into place.

His stand-alones do all this in a bout a third of the page count. And better, I find.

God, I love this series.

I love this series.

Albeit, Glokta's actions at the end were a Moral Event Horizon for me.

Just finished reading through the trilogy, and while I enjoyed it, the ending left me with such a strong hatred for Bayaz that I think I'll hold off on reading the rest until there's some more books released and a hint of a conclusion to the larger conflict one way or the other. Definitely of the "too dark to indulge in one sitting" type of reading, especially in the latter half of the third book.