The Blade Itself (The First Law: Book One) Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)I wasn't sure what to expect from this book. I read the blurb from the back and nearly turned away after reading only half of the summary. But something made me open it up and try the first few pages--and I was hooked. It starts with an action scene--like most fantasy novels--and it is described so well. It is realistic without splattering gore in your face. I can't think of any other author who treads that line so well as Joe Abercrombie does in The Blade Itself.
I didn't find this a funny book, overall. It's not a comedy at all. But there are several moments where I did laugh out loud as I read some clever description or a reaction of one of the characters. In fact I think I found more to smile at in this book than most other novels that are specifically tagged as being funny or humourous. The humour here isn't forced. I didn't feel like the author was trying to be funny. It was more like the humour you might find in casual conversation with a friend.
This book moves along at a good pace. It is one of those books where you want to keep reading to find out what happens, but, unlike many other page-turners, things actually happen in this one! I hate books that promise action or resolution just over the next page, just another page, one more page, and before you know it you've read half the book and still nothing's happened. This is definitely not a one-trick pony of a book. Each character is well developed and the plots intertwine naturally.
What this book doesn't contain are tired old writing techniques. Well, it's not perfect, but it's as close as I've come across in 15 years. Anyway, there are no stereotypical cliched fantasy characters. The author doesn't end each chapter on a contrived cliff-hanger and then talk about another character's life for ten chapters before returning to the cliff-hanger. He doesn't especially dwell on the gruesome details of battle, but he writes it as realistically as you'd want. Perhaps not super-realistic--this is a fantasy, after all--but it's not nearly as predictable as many.
Something else I noticed about the writing style is that Joe will change his writing a little to suit each character. So each time he changes the perspective to a new character, the way he describes the scenes changes, too. It's like he's letting us look through each of their eyes, rather than just giving us a homogenous narration throughout. They're not jarring transitions by any means, though. For me they really added to the story and made it all the more absorbing.
This is by far the most absorbing novel I have read for many years. And this is the most glowing review I have given any book on Amazon!

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