Book Thoughts

Just last week I finished up the second installment in Joe Abercrombie’s The First Law series, Before They Are Hanged. This second novel was an improvement over the first, but the same problems its predecessor had continue to plague it.

The Blade Itself (henceforth abbreviated as Blade) ended with our heroes beginning their journey to the Edge of the World to retrieve some sort of artifact that will help them destroy the still unnamed evil that is threatening the land. At the same time, Inquisitor Glokta was sent to a Union city under siege by a foreign power. He’s given the impossible task of protecting the city and at the same time rooting out the conspiracy at its heart.

Hanged introduces one new major character — a half-devil desert woman named Ferro Maljinn. She fills the archetypal role of a person who has lost all trust in humanity due to the circumstances of their upbringing. She’s a former slave and lives by the motto, “Never get close to people. Kill them instead.”

Nothing really new and invigorating here. It doesn’t take a psychic to predict her character growth. Gradually she’ll learn to trust the group of heroes but some sort of betrayal, probably a misunderstanding, will cause her to lose all her fragile new-found trust. But by the end of book three she’ll learn to trust again just in time to actually do whatever Bayaz or the world needs her to do in order to save it.

Gandalf-lite, I mean, Bayaz and the rest make their tired, old “quest to get the artifact” interesting because they all hate each other at the start. At least they’re not all best friends like in Lord Of The Rings. That would just be too much. However the hatred disappears pretty quickly after they survive an attack. I would have liked to see it last a little longer.

As far as plot goes, we learn a little more about the powerful evil. There is a sect of people lead by Khalul, a former contemporary of Bayaz, called Eaters who are threatening to enslave the world. They get their name by, wait for it, eating the flesh of men. This breaks the Second Law of Magic, but they are so powerful that Bayaz is going to have to break the First Law in order to beat them. Again, this is something that has been done before. Hero has to embrace evil in order to defeat an even greater evil. We all know how that turns out. I point to the books in the Star Wars Legacy Of The Force series as an example.

This book isn’t without high points. Abercrombie knows how to write a damn fine fight scene. You can almost hear, feel, and taste the battles. Blades flash. Blood spills. Abercrombie doesn’t skimp out on the gore and for that I applaud him. Too many times I’ve read fight scenes that are devoid of the sensory details that make them fight scenes.

The bottom line is, I really want to just stop reading these books. But at the same time, I want to read the third one, The Last Argument Of Kings, when it comes out to see if all my predictions come true or not. I sincerely hope that Abercrombie has more up his sleeve than he’s doled out so far. If my biggest predictions don’t come true then this entire series will have been worth it.

Score: 3 /5

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