Novel review: Joe Abercrombie - The First Law (2006-2008)

The whole Interweb (review and randos) constantly recommended it to me alongside the (awful) Malazan because The Black Company is my favourite saga, calling it similarly "grimdark" and cynical, etc... just no. "Misguided" is the gentlest word I could find to describe this comparison, same way that Heinlein and Asimov can both be called sci-fi.

Sure, there are some parallels like the intentionally unexplained magic system, the care put into writing some down to earth and believable characters/action or the mischievous gang of Northmen using nicknames, but those claims would have seemed much more reasonable if the story had focused exclusively on said gang and their adventures, methinks.

Objectively, I found The First Law pretty good and entertaining, but for some reasons I never fell in love with it. In retrospective, I can see at least three such reasons:

• The peculiar style constantly juggling with two or three plots. I understand the idea and it can be useful to keep things fresh but often breaks immersion too.
• Couldn't manage to care about the central plots, though various smaller happenings were to my taste.
• Too many battles, especially the long final one with the Eaters subplot.

In contrast, I really gelled with some of the more elaborate characters, like Glokta, Jezal or West (mostly those with enough written introspection) and found Bayaz pretty interesting. Logen and Ferro, on the other hand, felt more stereotypical to me; though still well written.

I guess I should also give some praise to the various political/power games and pretty vivid picture of heavy bureaucracy and incompetent hierarchy. Not quite reaching the best, but not that far either!

Again, objectively speaking it's probably an 8/10, but the whole left me with a weaker taste in mouth.