Joe Abercrombie's got balls. It's something about his attitude, the way he stares down cliche and then casually twists it to his own, brutal ends. It's something about the way he refuses to allow any of his characters a fairy-tale happy ending, or how he manages to build a world out of sarcasm, to turn cynicism into tone. I, along with everybody else, have been commenting on this compulsion to overturn the staid tropes of fantasy fiction since his First Law trilogy began. But it is only with Last Argument of Kings, Book Three of The First Law, that he brings his vicious story to a crashing finale. 

Mr. Abercrombie had a lot of ground left to cover, plotwise, at the end of Book Two; the main characters were essentially in position for the climax and conclusion of their respective adventures, but the final battles had yet to be played out. Before They Are Hanged represented a fruitless quest for a questionable goal, leaving the point-of-view characters somewhat purposeless at journey's end, literally back at square one. They had arrived home from a dreadful vacation, only to find that their problems were there waiting for them. 

In Hanged the author led the story into choppy seas; with Kings he delivers a brilliant maelstrom that none of his characters come out of in one piece. Loose ends are mercilessly chopped, conflicts resolved with bloody finality, and, often, grand hopes crushed in the jaws of brutal realism.
 
(A note to the wary: beyond here, there be spoilers.)

Character has almost always finished a distant second in epic fantasy: fantasy authors of the past have typically chosen to prioritize intricate, twisting plots and depth of setting over characterization.  Creating depth of character, therefore, often became a simple question of adapting existing archetypes and of attempting to conceal cliche. 

Joe Abercrombie, on the other hand, chooses character over plot.  The consequent effect is often a bit disconcerting: something in the back of the veteran epic fantasy reader's head is telling him stop, wait, there's something wrong here: things aren't proceeding as planned.  The cliches of epic fantasy are so ingrained in our heads that when an author strays from the formula, it immediately catches our attention.

Not that Joe Abercrombie is a stranger to formula or cliche; rather, he tends to take formulaic elements and give them his own cynical twist, especially when it comes to his characters.  The First Law trilogy has to this point been a veritable commentary on the state of the epic fantasy subgenre.  Combined with his own signature style of gritty realism, this makes reading a Joe Abercrombie book a singularly interesting experience, albeit one that sometimes makes you yearn for things to take a quicker, less examined pace.  That said, we decided it was finally time to review the second book in The First Law, Before They Are Hanged.

The story begins in media res: we first meet Logen Ninefingers, the infamous Bloody-Nine, in the middle of a fight.  As Logen tumbles through wet Northern forest, a group of insistent, stinking Shanka on his tail, we get our first taste of Joe Abercrombie's signature, nail-biting ability to make combat a truly visceral experience for the reader.  Logen buries his axe in one brute's skull as he slides off the edge of a cliff, finds that he has a hanger-on, and then promptly throws himself, the Shanka with him, into a gorge.  Thus begins The Blade Itself, Book One of Joe Abercrombie's new fantasy trilogy The First Law.  Say this for Joe Abercrombie: say he doesn't pull any punches.

Abercrombie's name seems to be on everyone's lips these days.  The Blade Itself, the author's first novel, is probably the most reader-acclaimed epic fantasy debut since A Game of Thrones first hit the shelves.  The recent release of Before They Are Hanged, Book Two of the trilogy, has only sealed Abercrombie's fate as the current poet laureate of a new school of heroic fantasists -- a school that began, perhaps, with Martin, and has come to define the best of the genre as a whole.   And it really is the readers who have made Abercrombie's work the success that it is: with both volumes, published only as trade paperbacks (albeit with attractively dark, blood-spattered covers wrapped around good paper), the critical praise on the back covers and opening pages of each book is a veritable Who's Who of the fantasy/sci-fi blogging world.  You won't find any New York Times quotes here. 

The praise includes a lot of words like "bloodthirsty," "violent," "fast," and "fight scenes."  It also includes words like "action," "intrigue," "exhilarating," and "accomplished."  The necessarily selective nature of cover blurbs notwithstanding, the early reviewers generally have it right: The Blade Itself is a bold, ambitious first novel that manages to encompass both complex character study and vicious, bloody action.  More than anything else, however, the book shows a greater potential as yet unreached.

Speaking of George Martin, A Dribble of Ink put up a link last week to an article on A Game of Thrones written by up and coming British fantasy author Joe Abercrombie for SFX Magazine.