"The Blade Itself" by Joe Abercrombie

There’s a quote on the back of the book where a reviewer compares The Blade Itself to The Lord of the Rings. I initially rolled my eyes at the trite and overplayed comparison, but after finishing the novel I’m rather resigned to agree. The Blade Itself is like if The Fellowship of the Ring was solely focused on the lives and history of each member of the Fellowship — and how they ended up joining the fellowship — and if the story concluded immediately upon the Fellowship’s formation and departure. I don’t mean that as a negative; it’s an interesting and novel approach to telling a story. But like The Fellowship of the Ring, The Blade Itself is very much the first act of a larger story.

It’s almost an understatement to call this book character driven. This book is certainly not for everyone. Among the many consequences of treating the first book as the first act of an epic is the decision to start in a world of foregone conflicts. In some ways it feels like this book is the sequel to a story we’ve never read, the aftermath of a conflict that is only spoken about. From there nations slowly gear up for another war that we still have not seen “on screen” by the end of the book. The choice to structure the narrative as such — for us to see the aftermath, but not the action — is one of several reasons that I wouldn’t blindly recommend this book to someone. The progression of the overall plot is glacial, and it’s not clear what the book is working towards until we are well into the second half. The payoffs are not sweeping culminations of epic proportions, but the satisfaction of small pieces fitting together as a larger picture comes into focus.

I find this book incredibly interesting. In a vacuum, if someone told me the above I would consider it to range from an outright negative to an apprehensive “we’ll see where this goes.” But that’s not an accurate portrayal of how I feel about this book, and that’s not the message I’m trying to get across. For the majority of the story I did not feel passionately invested, but I found myself continuing to pick it up regardless. Investment crept up on me until I suddenly realized, hundreds of pages in, that I was fully submerged. It wasn’t until the leadup to the first bout of the Championship, when I found myself getting nervous alongside Jezal, that I realized how much I had come to care. I don’t think I’ve ever had my anxiety rise alongside a character in a novel like it did in that moment. There is not much in the way of character development in this first book — Jezal, the largest exception — but despite apparent stagnation the slow drip of additional information revealing more about each character kept them interesting and engaging. Instead of a character changing, we get a deeper, more detailed perspective into who they are. Jezal changes the most, but even his story is not him turning into a good man; Jezal’s path over the course of the book is a few small steps towards becoming a better person. Every character is thoroughly flawed in one way or another and it’s this deep focus on character that makes this story and world compelling despite the lack of a developing narrative relative to other stories. It makes it all the more rewarding whenever we get to see past a character’s hard exterior and see a moment of vulnerability or grief — only for it to be buried again the next chapter.

This book is not for everyone, and I appreciate and respect that. Abercrombie has a world he wants to explore and characters he wants to examine, and this book is the result of that intentional focus. The world of The Blade Itself is dark and violent, but the narration doesn’t revel in it. Violence is just a part of this world — a part of the characters’ lives — and the characters have no option but to live in it. Perhaps one day they’ll be able to do something about it. Perhaps not.