The Blade Itself

Joe Abercrombie

I’ve been delving backwards a lot lately. Soaking up old music from the smashing pumpkins and Zwan, re watching Community for the first time since I was in high school. With all the perpetual posturing and chaos around us bombarding our daily lives I am searching for common comforts. Before I started this book I was deciding between the Dresden files (another property I haven’t read but have seen the adaptation on TV) or The Blade itself. I didn’t realize this book in a way was so similar to a title I had already read, Game of thrones.

This book is high fantasy that has many notes of GRRM. An empire in denial of a growing threat. A vast world of which we get a snapshot of the castle. Magic thought to be a myth to those in power versus reality. The king here is all but a puppet which George In his pursuit of Westeros never managed to push as an idea.

Abercrombie paints the kingdom and capital as Adua. The pace here is at a high clip and left me not knowing how much actual time we received with any characters. Noiy here the book does have what I consider a bloody climax to the violence with the Bloody Nine Logen making a proper introduction as his Jekyll and Hyde combination. This come far enough into the book to strike intrigue but not give any satisfying answers. Much of the book is strung along by the reader not quite understanding the over arching plot and being pulled by the first magus as the characters are. I’ve always been a fan of how these universe evolve through what we see and Abercrombie does a great job of that.

The detective story of Glotka is wonderfully woven through this volume as he struggles and fails to uncover Bayaz as a fraud. The slow unveiling that essentially the inquisition is a crooked policing force and the intricacies around coerced confessions really set the violent tone for the book some others have noted.

One weak spot was the introduction later into the book of Ferro. I had a hard time visualizing the woman or what her value was for a bit. Unlike Logen, she had a lot less runway of story before getting to the capital so I can understand the placement here but putting here up further to break up some of the first part may have been more engaging. Yet just as likely another character joining the fellowship may have caused my head to spin further than it already had.

This book ends with the formation of a fellowship secretly sanctioned by the government whether to keep the chaos of the Magus out of the public eye or really because of the public good, I am not sure. Also as noted the role of Jezal is unclear in this merry band apart from the idea that Bayas may be able to elevate him to that of a phenomenally brave fighter over his brash self. The Blade itself has me wondering again if the tone of the original fellowship had such a tone. Instead of that of endorsement and support of an unlikely quest.

I was expecting the sin city of fantasy novels and I suppose in a way I got what I thought.