The Blade Itself

Well, I ran out of A Song Of Ice And Fire books, and was jonesing for some of that awesome gritty dark new fantasy, and had heard good things about Joe Abercombie. I had been given his "Best Served Cold", but that book seemed to indicate that it followed on from the First Law trilogy, so I headed off to The Book Depository and had them send me the series posthaste.

In short, it's good. It's not quite ASoIaF good, but it's getting there. So far, it seems to be suffering from empty-world syndrome (which I discussed when talking about Pern when reviewing Legends). George R. R. Martin's world is just so relentlessly full - full of people, history, places - that it feels like a completely real world. By comparison, so far, Abercrombie's world isn't very big. There aren't really many places or people. The history is rather shallow. So it feels rather pale in comparison. But in my opinion it's a bit unfair to compare any modern Fantasy with Martin.

Having said that, the (few) characters are as good as Martin's. It's a shades-of-grey-ey world, where the characters you're following are generally either killers, torturers, or completely self-absorbed prats, but are drawn carefully by the author so that they become flawed people that you give a damn about. Even Martin would have had a hard time making a torturer in the Inquisition into a character you can empathize with, and whose lot in life you hope will improve.

It's an enjoyable read, and I'm onto the second book already. Definitely worth reading in between installments of ASoIaF.