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A review by mikarala
The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie
adventurous
dark
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
This book doesn't have a plot, and it drove me crazy.
Let me clarify: things do happen in this book. There's some action, some notable events. We have multiple characters whose storylines even converge. But essentially, this was an entire book of exposition and set-up. We end the story with our characters about to leave and go do things. An entire 515 pages dedicated to basically just setting up the next book in the series. I appreciate that tension needs to build over the course of multiple books with a series, but personally, I still need each individual book to have a plot. The fact that tension only rose by maybe 10% over the course of this whole book (and mostly in the last 50-75 pages or so) made it a very frustrating reading experience. So much of the book just felt like we were following the characters through mundane bullshit.
For example, an absurd amount of storytime is dedicated to Jezal's fencing training, and his crisis over whether or not he should bother to dedicate himself to it. I can get onboard with the fact that this is Jezal's inner conflict for the first half of the book or so, but the book spends an inordinate amount of time on his actual training and daily life as a soldier, which does nothing other than establish character. Unlike something like Harry Potter, where the training part at least contributes to world building (with significant lessons often becoming plot points), there's nothing else going on in these chapters. It feels like it's designed to make you lose interest. Truthfully I spent most of Jezal's and Glokta's chapters wishing I had finished them so I could read from Logen's POV again, because I did actually enjoy his chapters a lot. I'm not sure if it's because there was generally more world-building in his POV, or because it definitely feels like he's central to the plot (however obscure that plot actually is), but I did have a better time reading them for sure.
Ultimately, I'm going to continue reading as I purchased the whole trilogy and the end of the novel leaves you with enough curiousity about what's happening that I'm inclined to continue, but the fact that this book didn't seem to have its own individual story made it a really frustrating reading experience for me. I'm hoping that pays off in the later books, at least.
Just a last note on the grimdark aspect of this story: it is a dark, bleak, and violent fantasy world, but perhaps because the prose was somewhat detatched from a lot of the gore and didn't tend to linger on it, I didn't find the level of gore unbearable (and this from someone who is actually quite sensitive to that kind of thing!). In general, even though Abercrombie's writing kind of left me wanting more a lot of the time, I did appreciate the relative briskness of the prose style and found it made it easier to read 500+ pages of a story that basically didn't have a plot.
Let me clarify: things do happen in this book. There's some action, some notable events. We have multiple characters whose storylines even converge. But essentially, this was an entire book of exposition and set-up. We end the story with our characters about to leave and go do things. An entire 515 pages dedicated to basically just setting up the next book in the series. I appreciate that tension needs to build over the course of multiple books with a series, but personally, I still need each individual book to have a plot. The fact that tension only rose by maybe 10% over the course of this whole book (and mostly in the last 50-75 pages or so) made it a very frustrating reading experience. So much of the book just felt like we were following the characters through mundane bullshit.
For example, an absurd amount of storytime is dedicated to Jezal's fencing training, and his crisis over whether or not he should bother to dedicate himself to it. I can get onboard with the fact that this is Jezal's inner conflict for the first half of the book or so, but the book spends an inordinate amount of time on his actual training and daily life as a soldier, which does nothing other than establish character. Unlike something like Harry Potter, where the training part at least contributes to world building (with significant lessons often becoming plot points), there's nothing else going on in these chapters. It feels like it's designed to make you lose interest. Truthfully I spent most of Jezal's and Glokta's chapters wishing I had finished them so I could read from Logen's POV again, because I did actually enjoy his chapters a lot. I'm not sure if it's because there was generally more world-building in his POV, or because it definitely feels like he's central to the plot (however obscure that plot actually is), but I did have a better time reading them for sure.
Ultimately, I'm going to continue reading as I purchased the whole trilogy and the end of the novel leaves you with enough curiousity about what's happening that I'm inclined to continue, but the fact that this book didn't seem to have its own individual story made it a really frustrating reading experience for me. I'm hoping that pays off in the later books, at least.
Just a last note on the grimdark aspect of this story: it is a dark, bleak, and violent fantasy world, but perhaps because the prose was somewhat detatched from a lot of the gore and didn't tend to linger on it, I didn't find the level of gore unbearable (and this from someone who is actually quite sensitive to that kind of thing!). In general, even though Abercrombie's writing kind of left me wanting more a lot of the time, I did appreciate the relative briskness of the prose style and found it made it easier to read 500+ pages of a story that basically didn't have a plot.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Gore and Violence