Review: The First Law Trilogy where I am not coherent at all

Hello people! How are you? And how are your reading going? I can’t really complain, because I am having a great time with them! And I had quite some fortune in the past days, too… so all is good! And it’s even better because today I am here to talk about you all of a series that I finished not too much time ago and that I loved!
And I really, madly, deeply, truly loved it so I know that I won’t be coherent about it, but I just don’t want to gush sweet nonsense, so I opted for a bullet review and I have tried to do my best to do justice to a series that is simply amazing!

Series Name: The First Law trilogy
Books: The Blade Itself
Before They Are Hanged
Last Argument of Kings
Author: Joe Abercrombie

Why you need to read this series?

Joe Abercrombie is Pratchett meets Martin all wrapped up neatly (or not so much neatly, oops!)

But if that is not enough of a reason… well, keep reading!

• Glotka. He is one of the best characters ever! He’s an inquisitor, crippled at it, and he was a former champion of the Kingdom, til the enemies capture him, torture him, break him and them send him back home like a precious present. He is not one of those characters who appeal to your soft side, he is not one of the good guys (even if talking about good and bad guys in these books is a bit… complicated at best!) and usually he would be one of those characters to whom you don’t pay much attention. But not here. Glotka is a masterpiece! There aren’t just words to make him justice. He is a complex character, with his own voice, personality and rich in the inner life. You just have to meet him!
• The other characters. I think Glotka is one of the best ever. But Abercrombie gives live to a cast of characters that are deeply real, with all their lights and shadows, complex and completed. More than stories, these books are amazing studies of characters. Because it’s with them that Abercrombie reaches the top. He is a genius, and his genius expresses itself with the characters. We have really a lot of them, all of them aren’t just some figures on the scenery. All of them matter and all of them are complete. Glotka is my favorite, but we have Logen, for example, that is almost as good as the Inquisitor. And West, just to name another. But really, we have a lot of them, and all of them would seem to you like old friends.
• The Plot. I know… I just said that the best thing in these books is the characters. And that’s true. Characters win over plot time and again in this trilogy. But that is not to say that we don’t have a plot, or that the plot is bad. It’s just that the plot is secondary to the characters, and that’s not a minus. The author menage to create compelling reading, with no boring times, in which the plot is, somehow, secondary to the protagonists. The first book could be summarized as “great characters go to places and do things”. Really. I kid you not. And I loved it anyway. I was captivated by it, intrigued and curious and I wasn’t bored. Never.
• It’s valid food for thoughts. It’s a fantasy, set in a world that is not like our world, in a time that is not our time, but sometimes it’s like he is speaking about our world and time. And if a book is good, really good, it is expected, because a great book it’s a book you can relate to, in more than one way, it’s not just great for its characters or for the plot, but it’s great because it speaks about some universal truth. And here we have a lot of this. And I loved it. I loved it so much, because it’s another way in which the author shows his brilliance.
• The feeling. This series would make you laugh, smile, cry, shout, rage. It would make you happy, sad, irate, anxious, curious. It would move you and it would confuse you. It would give you some new friends and it would make you think. This series could be everything you look in a book, and then something more.

I really loved this series (even if I think that the first page of The Heroes is a masterpiece that it’s impossible to outdo) and I have tried to express how much in this review, even if I didn’t manage to make it justice!

And what about you? Have you read this series? Or other books by the author? Let me know!!

Happy reading!
S.