A review by tanvi_bangar
Before They Are Hanged by Joe Abercrombie

3.5

This book was definitely a step up from the previous one, especially the first half. The most noticeable difference was Glokta’s plot, here the suspense about the traitor felt more interesting and kept me intrigued. The journey of the group of Logen also was better than the first book since there were more characters and more dynamics here at play. Lastly, although West and the Northmens’ story wasn’t that good but it was still fine enough. 

For all these stories unfortunately the payoff was not that much, again some of the action seemed to just happen behind the scenes, planning was never shown and consequences didn’t feel that bad especially in Glokta’s story. Due to the fast pacing or the short length it didn’t feel like there was time to really get engrossed in things. Glotka letting the woman go was so quick that I really didn’t get to understand his change of heart, ofc I know it was her caring about the country and what not but still. Same with Jezhal, his injury changing him makes sense in theory but it felt as though that information was just shoved on me rather than shown. Logen and Ferro I would say was not too bad, her inner monolouge of trust was a bit tell-y but it still came slow enough to make sense. 

I know ofc that Quai has had something happen to him but I wish that was more subtle, it was made crazy obvious, rather than letting the reader have a sliver of doubt it was just made to be so in my face. The endings also kind of felt as though there was little pay off. Glotka’s Dogoska plot moved the war at crazy speed and ended pretty abrubtly. I did like the ending and the mystery of who killed the prince and the bank but it didn’t add too much. The northmen’s war were lowkey so anticlimactic, tbh not just them but any wars were really not written in a way for me to be fully hyped about it, they were pretty average. I just cared about the outcome which sort of ruins the whole thing, at least Threetrees death was impactful. 

The book was still good and nice to get through but there didn’t feel to be a sufficient villain, ofc I know there are the fantasy elements and Khalul is the villain, but its just not fleshed out enough to actually care about. We also don’t have any direct encounters with any important villain. Nonetheless, I do home to see everyone back in ardua soon or at least 2 groups there together in the next book. All of this is not to say that the book was bad because it was definitely still good with really good character writing which I enjoy reading, especially Logen and Glokta.