The First Law trilogy - overrated?

[grumbler]

I was looking for some new fiction to read when I ran across here, a month or two ago, a very enthusiastic set of endorsements for the Joe Abercrombie The First Law trilogy, so I picked it up at my local bookstore.  I don't recall who all was posting the endorsements 9berkut's stuck in my mind, but there were others).

I am now struggling to finish the third book, and think it may save someone some lifespan if i point out that this certainly isn't a series for everyone.

Abercrombie is a good writer from the language standpoint.  His vocab is excellent, and his writing flows smoothly.  The only complaint I would have from a technical standpoint is that Abercrombie is sometimes too clever for his own good; he has a line at one point, for instance, about how a clock "vomits forth" some chimes.  That would be a great line in the right place.  In the wrong place, though, it breaks immersion and lets the reader know the author thinks himself a clever chap - it is too much.

Where I disagree with Berkut and friends is in the overall character of the books.  Abercrombie has created some interesting concepts for his protagonists, but cannot actually execute them into flesh-and-blood characters.  The torturer tortures people he knows to be innocent, but we never understand why.  It isn't because he is a bad person - he also does altruistic things.  it isn't because he doesn't know the difference between right and wrong - he notes to himself that what he is doing is wrong.  he just does it.  The rest of the protagonists are pretty much the same - cardboard cutouts that are really interesting in outline but completely flat in execution.  Each has one (and only one) trademark line or act that is endlessly repeated:  the torturer grimacing in pain, the viking dude with his "say this about Logen..." etc.

The plot of the trilogy may be excellent, but since it hasn't begun yet (and I am halfway through the third book) it seems this "trilogy" doesn't have a plot.  It is more like a series of stories strung together.  That is actually another of the weaknesses of the series - all of the alternating chapters, with different characters featured in each, robs all of the stories of their narrative force - just as one of them starts to interest the reader, the story shifts to another character in another location.

Abercrombie deliberately chose not to have any maps in these books, so that the reader would be unable to relate what was happening to one character to what was happening to another.  That was a serious blunder, IMO, because Abercrombie doesn't do nearly enough description to tell you what the relationship is between places, nor how "epic" the supposedly long quests are.  If Abercombie doesn't care whether or not the home nation of two of his main characters is an island or not, why should the reader care?

The final problem i have with these books is that Abercrombie goes to lengths to ensure that none of the leaders of the three nations involved in the story - inhabited by Vikings, a sort of infantry-oriented Holy Roman Empire, and Arabs, respectively - are the slightest bit admirable.  They torture and kill innocents for black magic or simply because it is easier than trying to find out truths.  In the war between them, the reader doesn't care who wins.  Even if you start to care about a character, that character is like a soldier in the Soviet or German armies of WW2 - you don't want their side to win.

Frankly, if I hadn't bought all three books before I started, I wouldn't finish the series.  It is technically excellent but really suffers from not having a story editor who could have sent Abercrombie back to the drawing board until he had a story worth telling - and who would have told him to cut down on the number of characters and side stories he tried to tell.

It is totally appropriate that Abercrombie replaced Jordan on the Wheel of Time series.  He is a better writer, but just as directionless and unable to create 3D characters as Jordan was. 

[crazy canuck]

Thank you.  You just saved me from a purchase I would have regretted.

[Berkut]

Grumbler is utterly wrong.

I haven't even read these books, much less endorsed them.

WRONG WRONG WRONG!

I am actually about a third of the way into the first book, which I got from the library. So far, it has been kind of "meh". The characters have interesting ideas about them, but they haven't really grabbed me yet, perhaps they never will?

Anyway, it was acually Malthus who recommended these, in the GoT thread.

[grumbler]

Grumbler is utterly wrong.

I haven't even read these books, much less endorsed them.
...
Anyway, it was acually Malthus who recommended these, in the GoT thread.

Really?  it was the (false) memory of your endorsement that made me buy the books, since I have found your tastes similar to mine.

Now that is funny.  Luckily I paid only $9 for the three books.

[Malthus]

It was indeed I who recommended them. So far, people I've recommended them to have had two reactions - some have loved them and some have said "meh, all these characters are horrible, and I really don't for or about any of them".

The plots do tie together by the end of the last book, and all of the seeming side-issues tie in; there is an overarching plot.

What I liked about the series is that the writing was fun, clever and gritty; he's taken a bunch of fantasy tropes (the barbarian, the wizard and the young warrior on a quest) and done something different with them.

Similar to another series I rather enjoyed, the Bernie Gunther "Berlin Noir" mysteries by Philip Kerr - the protaganists are damaged and compromised people; though Gunther is a good deal more sympathetic than anyone in the First Law.

[ulmont]

It was indeed I who recommended them. So far, people I've recommended them to have had two reactions - some have loved them and some have said "meh, all these characters are horrible, and I really don't for or about any of them".

I am in the first camp; I thought that series was great.

[grumbler]

What I liked about the series is that the writing was fun, clever and gritty; he's taken a bunch of fantasy tropes (the barbarian, the wizard and the young warrior on a quest) and done something different with them.

Yes, he has done something different with them:  he has made us not care! 

The "young warrior on a quest," of course, doesn't even really know he is on a quest, and he is the only character that actually thinks about what will happen more than a couple of weeks into the future.  The torturer character could be interesting, if he actually thought about his own future.  As it is, he and the others are mere mechanical parts creaking along to ever-so-slowly advance whatever plot there is.

It is kind of ironic that the only character who actually does think about his future ("the Dogman") is a bit character.

I don't really blame Abercrombie:  he is a first writer, who happens to have fallen into the hands of a crap editor.

[DisturbedPervert]

I thought it was pretty good, and liked the plot and the characters.  Most fantasy is awful, so perhaps it is overrated.

[Malthus]

What I liked about the series is that the writing was fun, clever and gritty; he's taken a bunch of fantasy tropes (the barbarian, the wizard and the young warrior on a quest) and done something different with them.

Yes, he has done something different with them:  he has made us not care! 

The "young warrior on a quest," of course, doesn't even really know he is on a quest, and he is the only character that actually thinks about what will happen more than a couple of weeks into the future.  The torturer character could be interesting, if he actually thought about his own future.  As it is, he and the others are mere mechanical parts creaking along to ever-so-slowly advance whatever plot there is.

It is kind of ironic that the only character who actually does think about his future ("the Dogman") is a bit character.

I don't really blame Abercrombie:  he is a first writer, who happens to have fallen into the hands of a crap editor.

I saw the torturer dude as more being driven along by his past than thinking about the future, a sort of willing victim of cirumstances - he does what he does because the alternative - living on the charity of his relations - is, in his mind, worse; but just going along with the flow of what his superiors want just gets him deeper and deeper involved. I didn't find him, or the other characters, mechanical.

But I'll not attempt the hopeless task of convincing someone to like a book they don't. I liked it, but it is obviously not the sort of series everyone is going to like. De gustibus non est disputandum, and all that. 

[grumbler]

I saw the torturer dude as more being driven along by his past than thinking about the future, a sort of willing victim of cirumstances - he does what he does because the alternative - living on the charity of his relations - is, in his mind, worse; but just going along with the flow of what his superiors want just gets him deeper and deeper involved. I didn't find him, or the other characters, mechanical.

I understand the concept of a character who just turns off his humanity as a result of suffering, I just find that character uninteresting as a main character, because his thinking is so alien to our own.

He has a chance to save the peace, save an innocent man's life, and find a true killer before that killer strikes again.  His boss tells him to doom his nation to a war it cannot win, horrifically execute and innocent man, and forget about finding the true killer.  He agrees.  At other times in the book, he demonstrates that he doesn't fear death (and would, in fact, welcome it) but at this juncture he turns into a robot and executes absurdly "evil" and horrifically damaging orders, and in fact takes a friend to the execution!

But I'll not attempt the hopeless task of convincing someone to like a book they don't. I liked it, but it is obviously not the sort of series everyone is going to like. De gustibus non est disputandum, and all that.

I don't know why convincing someone to like a book they've already read would even be an objective. I certainly am not trying to make you dislike it, and I don't disagree with your reasons for liking it.   Cannot we just discuss a work (and a new writer) without having to convince anyone to like or dislike anything?

[grumbler]

I thought it was pretty good, and liked the plot and the characters.  Most fantasy is awful, so perhaps it is overrated.

It is true that I don't read much modern fantasy, just because it is so crap, so this series may be relatively brilliant, but...

[Berkut]

I don't know why convincing someone to like a book they've already read would even be an objective. I certainly am not trying to make you dislike it, and I don't disagree with your reasons for liking it.   Cannot we just discuss a work (and a new writer) without having to convince anyone to like or dislike anything?

I, for one, have yet to finish even the first book.

I've decided that whether I continue or not will be based on the two of you and your arguments for whether or not I should like it. Then I will decide whether I like it or not, and either finish reading the series enjoying it immensely, or burn the library copy I have in disgust.

Please continue.

[grumbler]

I, for one, have yet to finish even the first book.

I've decided that whether I continue or not will be based on the two of you and your arguments for whether or not I should like it. Then I will decide whether I like it or not, and either finish reading the series enjoying it immensely, or burn the library copy I have in disgust.

Please continue.

Not sure there is any continue to continue.  I had thought the series more widely read and admired than appears to be the case. 

Well, at least no one can say that they didn't hear two sides to the story.

[Malthus]

I saw the torturer dude as more being driven along by his past than thinking about the future, a sort of willing victim of cirumstances - he does what he does because the alternative - living on the charity of his relations - is, in his mind, worse; but just going along with the flow of what his superiors want just gets him deeper and deeper involved. I didn't find him, or the other characters, mechanical.

I understand the concept of a character who just turns off his humanity as a result of suffering, I just find that character uninteresting as a main character, because his thinking is so alien to our own.

He has a chance to save the peace, save an innocent man's life, and find a true killer before that killer strikes again.  His boss tells him to doom his nation to a war it cannot win, horrifically execute and innocent man, and forget about finding the true killer.  He agrees.  At other times in the book, he demonstrates that he doesn't fear death (and would, in fact, welcome it) but at this juncture he turns into a robot and executes absurdly "evil" and horrifically damaging orders, and in fact takes a friend to the execution!

There is in fact an explaination for that, but it involves quite comprehensively spoiling the ending of the book. If you don't care, I'll do it.

[grumbler]

There is in fact an explaination for that, but it involves quite comprehensively spoiling the ending of the book. If you don't care, I'll do it.

There is an in-character explanation for why Abercrombie hides his reasons from us?  That I will wait to see.

However, that would make all or some of Abercrombie's characters unreliable narrators, which would make things worse, not better.