I don't know who actually green lit the publication of this book but tbh I think they need to wait a little bit and think before making hasty decisions. I started this with Every Heart A Doorway to get a little bit change of pace but it took way longer to read compared to the before mentioned, not because it was too long per say, I read Eon by Allison Goodman and read Brandon Sanderson's The Final Empire in less time but because this was insanely difficult to get into. And if I'm honest, A Little Hatred is the one that really interested me I just picked up this one for the back story. I know The Blade Itself was Abercrombie's first book, so it might not necessarily be his strongest. Or I might just jump straight to A Little Hatred. I know I didn't give it much of a chance, so I might give it another shot. It was just a whole bunch of telling me who every character was, what motivated them, etc. There were like four or five character descriptions like that.

I am every bit as important as the rest of you.’' licked his lips with an expression at once careful and slightly desperate, an expression which seemed to say, ‘I am not young or poor. “He sat back in his chair and hunched his brawny shoulders with a frown that said, ‘I am big and manly, and have a quick temper, so I should be treated with respect by everyone.’” I might give this another shot at some point, but for now, it actually felt kind of… childish? In one chapter, a character described everyone's personalities like this: A bald old man with a terrible temper and a pathetic assistant, he could be the First of the Magi, he could be a spectacular fraud, but whatever he is, he's about to make the lives of Glotka, Jezal and Logen a whole lot more difficult.

But as he's discovering, old habits die really, really hard indeed.

Vain, shallow, selfish and self-obsessed, the biggest blot on his horizon is having to get out of bed in the morning to train with obsessive and boring old men.Īnd Logen Ninefingers, an infamous warrior with a bloody past, is about to wake up in a hole in the snow with plans to settle a blood feud with Bethod, the new King of the Northmen, once and for all-ideally by running away from it. Nobleman, dashing officer and would-be fencing champion Captain Jezal dan Luthar is living a life of ease by cheating his friends at cards. Inquisitor Glokta, a crippled and increasingly bitter relic of the last war, former fencing champion turned torturer extraordinaire, is trapped in a twisted and broken body-not that he allows it to distract him from his daily routine of torturing smugglers.

Joe abercrombie the blade itself series