The Blade Itself

This is my second pass at The Blade Itself, I first read this in the midst of a finals crunch. I never gave this series a fair shot at lodging itself in my brain, I somehow read the whole book and retained next to nothing. Imagine my shock, the shock of finding something undeniably great on a second reading!

This series is often compared to Game of Thrones and is the poster child for the Grimdark Fantasy sub-genre; Grimdark is the clarion call of ambiguous morality, grit, and violence. The First Law is about a darker age, where magic and horror abound- where the environment is often the deadliest enemy- but certainly not the only one to be wary of.

The Blade Itself is very much a setup book. If you've read or watched GoT then you'll be forgiven for finding the plot a little tired; a war between kingdoms all the while an alien threat brews in the frozen north. The real draw of this first book is the characters on offer, I felt like there was someone for everyone to latch onto, fierce barbarian warriors, spoiled nobles, and ancient magi. Personally, I loved the character of Sand Dam Glokta the tortured POW turned sadistic inquisitor. There is no shortage of backstory or mysticism either, this is a fully fleshed-out world and I'm excited to see how all these characters will choose to play in this exquisite sandbox.

The real charm is in the dialogue and its presentation. The Blade Itself reads like multiple hours of carefully crafted television, particularly in ensemble passages where the conversation is so natural that it could be confused for a transcript. In my imagination, I was watching an entire season of TV produced by HBO, and that feeling only gets stronger as the story progresses and more and more of our characters gather in the same physical locations. Switching between print and audiobook only made this quirk of the narrative even more obvious, I absolutely ruined a pot of rice while listening to a confrontation between the magus Bayaz and Glokta because the mental scene was so captivating.

I usually hate setup stories but this book is something a little more. The text demands quite a bit of your attention but there is definitely a payoff. I don't think I've gotten to the Entrée of the series but this appetizer holds its own.