Joe Abercrombie's The First Law

Most novels, and by extension series, seldom spring from one idea and one idea alone. Novels are mosaics of ideas taken from many different places and compiled into something different/new. And for a trilogy, the number of ideas necessary, naturally, is tripled. That said, every mosaic starts with its first piece; in the case of novels, that piece is usually in the form of a "what if..." question. If I had to guess at the one for Joe Abercrombie's First Law trilogy, it would be this:

"What if Gandalf from the Lord of the Rings was actually a Machiavellian GM playing a real-life game of DND with his greatest enemy, and everyone else in the world is just a piece on their board?"

Answer: The First Law Trilogy.

Abercrombie's widely recognized series came out over a decade ago, but I'm just now getting to it for two reasons: 1) I didn't know if I would like it because there's nothing worse than coming across something in a genre you like that's awful and 2) my brother.

One of the things my brother and I have in common is a love of the fantasy genre. If you want us to actually get into a conversation, the best thing is to ask the two of us who our favorite contemporary writers are in fantasy. Naturally, the usual suspects come up (Sanderson, Jemisin, etc.), but not Abercrombie. The one time I actually brought up Abercrombie's name in conversation the first thing my brother said to me was, "Oh, I hate that guy's stuff so much." He didn't elaborate then. But it did get me curious.

A couple of months ago, Audible just so happened to have a 2-for-1 credit sale in the SF/Fantasy department and one of the titles they had available was The Blade Itself. Still curious about Abercrombie, I went ahead and bought it. When I started listening at first, it was jarring.

The Blade Itself, and by extension the whole trilogy, begins with an action-packed prologue. One of the main characters, Logan Ninefingers, is running for his life away from a thing called a shanka (one of Abercrombie's in-world monsters, reminiscent of Orcs). You have no clue have no clue who he is, what a shanka is, or where they are at the moment. You show up in the middle of things, fleeing with this character.

As a reader, I'm what you might call a slow burner. I don't mind easing my way into a book, especially a big fat fantasy tome. So for me, to find myself sudden in the middle of this action filled situation, while it's happening, was jarring. In fact, I found it so jarring that I turned the damn thing off and switched to a different title. However, I was still curious. Maybe, I just needed to give this book a chance (something that I don't think a lot of readers do these days). So, after I a while, I restarted the audiobook from the beginning and listened.

The second attempt took. Once I got through the prologue and into chapter one, still with Logan, just after he's somehow survived a fall from a cliff edge into a river and I began to get to know him, I found myself starting to care. And then, when the narrative introduced the character Glokta, I was truly hooked. 

For those who've never read The First Law, the three books move between the viewpoints of 6 separate characters—3 major ones, and 3 minor ones—Logan Ninefingers, Sand dan Glokta, Jezal dan Luthar, Collem West, Ferro Maljinn, and The Dogman. The first thing you should know about all of them is that every character in this book is, to a greater or lesser degree, a bastard. There are no heroes and villains in this story, only protagonists, each with their own motivations for doing what they do. Some motives are more noble than others, but only by comparison. Each, however, is sympathetic in their own way. Given that Abercrombie's strength (I'd argue), is in creating great characters, let me give you profiles of each of them.

Logan is a man trying to escape his past. Known as The Bloody Nine (a nickname that you don't see the reason for until the end of the first book), he has a dark reputation as a blood thirsty, ruthless killer. Yet, there is a part of him that wish nothing more than to be a decent person. However, as is the case with many people, the second he finds himself back in his old homeland, The North, the old habits and old ways of thinking come back to him instantly. 

Glokta, on the surface, should be one of the most revealed characters in the book. He's a shunned, crippled, victim of torture, who after coming back from war becomes a torturer himself. While his body has been ruined, his mind has grown sharper than any blade, and he makes good use of it throughout the series. However, there's more to this man than might first be apparent. Though he claims to have had all sense of mercy and goodness taken out of him by his tormenters, there are still fragments of a decent man beneath his cynical callused shell, particularly when it comes to women.

Then there's Jezal. When I first met this character, my initially attitude toward him was that he should be punched in the face on a daily basis. He's arrogant, entitled, and thoroughly spoiled. Yet, over the course of the series, he managed to change, in large part thanks to the influence of Logan and in the aftermath of being smashed in the face with a mace. Abercrombie is so skillful a writer that by the series end, he made me transition from wanting to see this man get the crap kicked out of him to making me pity him.

Out of the three minor characters whose viewpoints we also see through, (Ferro, Collem, and Dogman), the one I ended up having the strongest feelings about was Collem. All three of these characters get short-changed in the first book, but their roles grow much more significant in the succeeding two volumes. 

Collem is the character (possibly next to the Dogman), who is the closest to being a decent person—save for one major flaw, his temper. At the end of the first book, he allows it get out of control to the point where he does something that, by any standards, would be hard to forgive. I found myself disliking him almost as much as Jezal by then. However, again over the next two books, you get to see the decent side of his personality—his desire to do his duty, and his desire to seek remorse and redemption—that by the time the third volume comes around, all I wanted was for him to survive. But this is a grimdark world, and not everyone gets what they want.

Ferro, meanwhile, who Abercrombie only introduces in the second half of the first book (and the only female viewpoint character), is a character who is hard to like. Initially, she struck me as a real nasty piece of work—not because she swears like a sailor, but because she has this overwhelming rage that poisons nearly every interaction she has with other people. However, particularly in the second book, you come to know her reasons for being the way she is. As a former slave, who lost everything she cares about, you come to understand why she can bring herself to be vulnerable with people. Too much of her life has been pain and misery for her to have an even remotely sunny disposition. 

Finally, Dogman. If self-doubt and mild anxiety had a name, it would be Dogman. This equally callused and hardened Northern warrior merely believes that his role is to be a subordinate to other people. He was one of Logan's righthand men, viewing himself really only as a scout, until the burden of command comes to rest on his shoulder. Then, we see the wily side of this warrior come into full-view. Without his thinking, Logan's greatest victory wouldn't have been possible. In a way, once their narrative threads intertwine again, he becomes the Jiminy Cricket to Logan's Pinocchio.

With these six characters, readers enter the world of the The First Law. And it is a cruel, hard world that cares very little about what's fair, what's right, and even at times, what's true if a lie can get you an advantage. "It's a hard world. No one gets what they deserve," Logan says in the Last Argument of Kings. 

Yet, despite the grimdark tone of the books, there are moments of dark, cynical humor, that (if that's a kind of humor you respond to), will have you cracking a smile. Additionally, even though it might not seem as though little goodness could exist in such worlds, Abercrombie never fails to remind readers that hope is never fully lost. One line that I think best reflects this comes from book 2, Before They are Hanged, and it's yet another line spoken by Logan: "Doing better next time. That's what life is."

If you do decide to give this series a read, I think you'll come away thinking 3 things. 1) No one, no matter how seemingly noble or seemingly terrible they appear, is wholly that; everyone has their flaws and their redemptive qualities. 2) When the world slaps you in the face, sometimes the only thing you can do is be grateful to still be around and have time to do better in the future, and that's enough. 3) If a strange man asks you to go on a magic quest, you're first and only answer should be no.