Bloody Epic Fantasy

I've been reading fantasy and sci-fi as long as I can remember. I tackled the entirety of The Lord of the Rings when I was in fifth grade. Ender's Game and its sequels sustained me through middle school. I've gone through three boxed sets of The Chronicles of Narnia, all worn to shreds by repeated reading. I bought The Eye of the World hot off the presses in 1990 and purchased each subsequent Wheel of Time book the day it released.

I have a long-standing thing for epic sci-fi/fantasy series, is what I'm saying.

It's no surprise, then, that I loved Joe Abercrombie's The First Law series: The Blade Itself, Before They Are Hanged, and Last Argument of Kings. Not only do the books have wicked cool covers (which can be an iffy thing in the fantasy genre), but Abercrombie knows his way around the English language. His prose is delightful, precise and accessible. His characters are interesting and, without exception, wonderfully flawed. Their lives are not pleasant, their endings rarely happy or even tied off in a satisfactory manner. I'm sure some of Abercrombie's readers have found this frustrating, but I found it refreshing.

I read all three books in succession, so the story played out as one lengthy narrative. Taken separately, I could find fault with the narrative structure of each individual book (The Blade Itself in particular). Altogether, however, the three novels flow nicely, and the narrative builds in a satisfactory manner.

The only complaint I have is The First Law's lack of interesting female characters. The majority of the close third person narrative is restricted to male perspectives. The only female character whose perspective is presented is hardly distinguishable from the male characters: her thoughts and ideas - even her behaviors - are not particularly feminine. (She's not a girly-girl character by any means, but regardless, women think differently than men. They just do.) I wish Abercrombie had allowed her to be recognizably female, instead of making her a masculine woman.

In spite of my quibble, The First Law series has earned a permanent spot on my bookshelf. It's always exciting to welcome a new member to the Fenner book family!