Say one thing for Joe Abercrombie: say he knows how to play off of a reader’s expectations.
I first read this trilogy maybe 5 or 6 years ago, and after thinking about it and putting it off for years I finally decided to do an audiobook re-read. To a certain degree this was absolutely awful timing on my part: I started The Blade Itself shortly before the pandemic began, and let’s just say that a series as bleak as the First Law wasn’t exactly the thing I would have selected to listen to while carefully staying six feet away from everyone while jogging.
The other side of it, though, is that this series is good enough I doubt I could have put it down midway even if I’d tried - and that’s with having read it before.
Where to begin. Nearly every character in this series is somewhere between unpleasant and downright reprehensible. Of the POV characters, the Dogman and Collem West aren’t that bad. That’s about the best that can be said of any of them, and those two are the minor POVs. I didn’t enjoy being in most of their heads, exactly. But Abercrombie did such a good job with the lot of them that I fully empathize with all of them. In point of fact, the only POV I can honestly say I consistently looked forward to and outright enjoyed was Sand dan Glokta, arguably the most vile of the lot. Let’s go through the list of the major POVs, shall we? Glokta is a professional torturer. Jezal is a vain selfish asshole. Logen is a brutal murderer a hundred times over. Ferro is as murderous as they come.
None of them are admirable. None of them get redemption. But I’m able to empathize with each of them because they all try. Logen tries openly, acknowledging his past and seeking to be a better man in the same way Caul Shivers will (in a mirror, not quite as darkly). Jezal is mostly looking to win approval, but he’s doing the right things in the process. Glokta is humanized by his loyalty towards Collem and Ardee and his desire (unevenly applied) to shield the pawns in the game from unnecessary suffering. Ferro finds something closer to a friend than, one suspects, she ever has, and starts changing in spite of herself.
And here Abercrombie bucks expectations and literary tropes and leaves everyone more-or-less completely unchanged at the end of the trilogy as at the beginning. Logen falls back into his old violent patterns. Ferro resumes her pointless private war with the Gurkish. Jezal’s growth turns out to be purely superficial, easily stripped away. And the last we see of Glokta, he’s torturing Arch Lector Sult purely for fun. Odd as it might seem, the person who (arguably) grew the most is probably Black Dow.
I want to talk about Dow a bit, because his journey was both very low-key and very interesting to watch. You have to know where it’s all going to see it, but it’s there. Dow is genuinely upset when Forley the Weakest is killed, and then Rudd Threetrees, and then Tul Duru Thunderhead. Forley was well-liked by pretty much everyone. Threetrees was someone that Dow respected. But Thunderhead? They did not get on. At. All. And I highly doubt the Black Dow we first see at the beginning of The Blade Itself would have mourned Thunderhead. He would have laughed and pissed on his grave. The way he’s talked about, I’m amazed Dow didn’t rape Cathil. He jokes about doing it, but the Dogman doesn’t have to really do anything to get him to leave her alone. Same at Ufrith: people talk about Dow like he’s about to go rape everybody, but he just rolls his eyes at that. Reading the final scene of the trilogy, where Dow turns on Logen, I genuinely think that he did so because he thinks Logen’s reign would be a horrible, blood-soaked one. Feels like growth to me, in a way none of the POV characters get.
I also want to talk about the Shanka, and what happens and - even more importantly - what doesn’t. Let’s review. The Shanka, to hear Logen tell of it, were always there, lurking somewhere to the north of the North and coming every winter. I’m assuming they live on an island up there, and it’s cold enough in the winter for the ocean to freeze and let them cross the ice. But some years before the start of the trilogy, they’ve been coming more and more frequently, and the area north of the High Places is pretty much overrun. We later learn they were made by the Master Maker, and that the Magi had tried to wipe them out but failed. We learn that there is a major force of them in the Old Empire, in the ruins of Aulcus. Then - worst of all - Bethod somehow forges an alliance with them, and they help in his war against the Union. Clearly they are a dire threat, and growing worse, and … nothing. Not dealt with, not even something anyone’s really worrying about. That’s not how the story is supposed to go. You don’t put in all this ominous foreshadowing about these ravening monsters imminent invasion of the world and then just ignore it. Unless you’re Joe Abercrombie, of course.
Next: Bayaz. Here’s probably the best example we see of Abercrombie playing off readers’ expectations. He doesn’t really do anything to show that Bayaz is a good guy. He does some pretty bad things right from the beginning. But we have this image in our head of the Wise Old Wizard, and that Wise Old Wizard frequently has a temper. Re-reading this and paying attention to Bayaz is almost like a re-watch of The Sixth Sense. How the hell was I caught by surprise the first time?
A few more points. I am always … suspicious is the best word, probably … when I pick up a new author that’s called “grimdark,” either by the author themselves of their fans. Blame George RR Martin, Game of Thrones, and (to no small extent) Abercrombie himself. They made the subgenre popular, and it’s really, really easy to do a shallow imitation and earn the “grimdark” label. Throw in some graphic depictions of violence, a rape or three, et voilà! You’ve got a grimdark book. And I hate that. I’ve put down books before because of rape scenes where the only point was estabilishing the author’s grimdark bonafides. It’s offensive, it’s cheap, and it’s lazy. Abercrombie’s not like that. He doesn’t throw in graphic violence for its own sake - it’s always there for a purpose. And he manages to do an entire grimdark trilogy, in many ways the quintessential grimdark trilogy, without any rape at all. (The scene with Ardee and Jezal wasn’t rape. I’m not sure what it was, but it wasn’t rape.)
And despite some really stomach-twisting brutality, Abercrombie manages to be consistently hilarious. I got quite a look from my wife when she asked what I was laughing about, and I had to say a guy just had his nipple cut off. Black Dow positioning Bad-Enough’s head on a pike with all the care of a professional interior designer, picking the best spot, getting the angle just right, was amazingly funny. The humor isn't for everyone, I’ll admit. But if you are able to laugh at a dead baby joke, then the First Law trilogy is great for that one Bingo square.
Last thing I want to mention: by the fucking dead Steven Pacey is an amazing narrator.