This is the first installment of a series for this blog that I’ve been considering for a while. I believe that an important part of any author’s job is to be fluent in the published body of their genre, which for me is fantasy (with a significant lean towards epic fantasy). I intend to write one of these reactions for every new fantasy novel or series as I finish them, but I’ll be starting to today with my most recent finished reading: the First Law Trilogy (the original three).

First, to lay the groundwork for anyone who may not be familiar with the trilogy. The First Law trilogy is a ‘grimdark’ fantasy from British author Joe Abercrombie. The series has a (largely deserved) reputation for being — depending on who you ask — genre-breaking, modern, dark, and subversive. It has drawn inevitable comparisons to George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire as a member of the vanguard of modern dark fantasy.

My Reaction

What you should know about The First Law trilogy before you consider reading is that it’s a gritty world, seeping with verisimilitude, in which bad people do bad things (largely to other bad people) and mostly get away with it. This is a story in which the villain wins. The good guys don’t lose, but only because there aren’t any good guys to start with.

If that sounds a bit like A Game of Thrones, you wouldn’t be entirely wrong. But there are a few major differences, and those differences are all in the way the characters and setting are presented.

In AGoT, we are presented with a generally terrible world that has shaped its inhabitants into generally terrible people, grinding down and breaking almost everyone to its mold. The few good characters seem out of place; naive victims waiting to happen, ready to be inevitably preyed upon by the vicious majority. Slowly but surely, even those viewpoint characters who didn’t start out as bitter, cynical political manipulators are forced to adapt or die.

By contrast, The First Law introduces us to a world that is actually fairly well sorted. Set in something roughly analogous to the European late middle ages in terms of technology and social order, it is clear that many people in this world are able to survive and get by just fine without being horrible human beings — which makes it all the more intentionally jarring that the novels chooses to present those who are terrible human beings as the clear winners of the narrative.

The Cast of Characters

The First Law trilogy is presented through a number of viewpoint characters, and is told in a tight third-person narrative; the prose changes by character, and it’s clear that we are seeing the world through the lens of each viewpoint character.

Unfortunately, they’re all unlikable to varying degrees, and several are outright evil.

Although the trilogy has six viewpoints in total, there is one dominant viewpoint — and fittingly enough, he is the one who most clearly exemplifies the overall tone and message of the series. A member of the Inquisition (think of the real thing and you won’t be wrong), we meet him early in the first book, torturing a confession from a former friend. While he’s doing this on orders, the final book ends with him torturing a former adversary purely (and explicitly) for his own enjoyment.

Wikipedia defines an antihero as ‘a main character in a story who lacks conventional heroic qualities and attributes, such as idealism, courage, and morality.’ Inquisitor Glokta is a classic antihero in this regard, but what separates him from other antiheroes I have enjoyed reading about (Geralt of Rivia, Elric of Melnibone, even Sandor Clegane) is that he is genuinely a rotten person. He isn’t a heroic person forced to do evil by his circumstances; he simply is evil.

Throughout the series, Glokta asks himself many times some form of the question ‘why do I do this?’, usually before torturing someone to extract a false confession. In his backstory, he was once a dashing cavalry officer who was captured by an enemy, tortured and crippled over two years of hell in their dungeons. Upon finding his freedom, he almost immediately returned home and began doing the same in service for his own government.

While Glokta seems at times to fool himself into believing that he doesn’t know the answer to his own question, we as readers are given it at the end of the trilogy. He does it because he enjoys doing it. He isn’t a victim of circumstance. He isn’t a hero who does evil for his country. He is just a villain, a fact we are left in little doubt of by the time we finish reading probably well over 200,000 words from inside his twisted mind.

And that leads me neatly into my conclusion…

Conclusion

Technically, The First Law trilogy is very well written. Joe Abercrombie is clearly a talented writer. However, I didn’t enjoy it in the end, and I feel strongly that this is a type of fantasy to avoid. I will consider it a cautionary experience; something to think back on, and check myself against if I might be afraid of straying too far into the dark.

Abercrombie presents a world heavy with all the trappings of a gritty, modern, ‘realistic’ fantasy setting. We are clearly meant to feel that this worlds reflects the one who actually live in, with people who feel real and relatable to our own lives. After all, aren’t we all victims of circumstance? How many of us can say we truly choose our course in life? Maybe there’s a little Inquisitor Glokta in us all.

But if there is, the only thing this series teaches us is that you should stamp it out completely before it consumes you. In a real world that is all too often dominated by real villains, I see no benefit whatsoever in creating a fantasy that is, if anything, even worse.

At the end of The Last Argument of Kings, there is no sense of accomplishment, no feeling that the last 1,500 pages have moved us forward in any way. The same wicked people are running the show as always have been, and the narrative tells us quite clearly that they always will be. Nothing has become better for the telling of the story, and there is little hope that anything will.

As an author of fantasy, I strive to create a world and characters in it that can make the reader feel something real. All I felt at the end of this trilogy was frustrated depression, and if I want that I can just turn on the news for free.