I am going to weigh in on the negative on The First Law trilogy. I think it starts doing an interesting riffs on traditional fantasy plot lines in unexpected ways that is refreshing. But then it gets drunk on the positive reviews and feedback and the third book is just a sprawling mess of incoherent “twists” and “turns” that come off as sloppy and nonsensical given how tight the first two books were.
Wikipedia says so. I guess I need to read them now.
Best Served Cold is my personal favourite (because I love a good group-heist plot), but I think Heroes could actually be the best entry point. It’s works quite well as a stand-alone book, without reading any of the others beforehand. In fact, it was the first of Abercrombie’s that I read.
Come on now, Red Country is the best one without a doubt :) At least we can all agree that the original trilogy doesn’t hold a candle to the “stand alone” follow on novels.
I actually wasn’t terribly into Red Country. I mean, I don’t think Abercrombie has written a bad book, but it just wasn’t particularly memorable to me. The Heroes is just absolutely devastating.
I read the first Malazon book, and felt it was too cold and detached. I like Joe Abercrombie’s series, though.
I mean it’s good also, especially because you-know-who is in it, but I just prefer the characters in Best Served Cold to the other ones in Red Country. Never did care much for Shy.
Yes. I wouldn’t recommend starting with the First Law for a new reader. Start with one of the standalones, and if you like it, read the First Law for the back story. Knowing the back story will ultimately make the standalones richer.
I’ll weigh in on The Heroes being his best as well. Great stuff. I listened to that, then Red Country, followed by the First Law trilogy (halfway through.)
Everything by Abercrombie is great. He takes everything you think you know about swords-and-sorcery fantasy and turns it inside damn out. Read them all! The “Half a…” series is also great, but I wanted to read more about the First Law characters. Alas, Joe Abercrombie is not my dancing monkey.
Glad to see there’s some other Long Price fans. Man, that is good. Led me to read the Expanse and his “Dagger and the Coin”, which is very good epic fantasy, but a lot more “safe”.
Oh, and if you’re a Daniel Abraham fan (or heck, even if you’re not), you gotta read The Cambist and Lord Iron!
I think you’d love the First Law trilogy, if only because of the way it, ahhhhh, subverts so many genre tropes, so beautifully. EDIT: or as JoshL put it, turns them inside out!
And Abercrombie is a wonderful stylist. He loves language, and it shows in these books. And his writing has a kinetic feel to it that seems absent from almost all the fantasy stuff I’ve read. I don’t think it’s a spoiler to mention that there’s a fight scene almost right away when you start the series that ought to be required reading for anyone who wants to do fantasy writing as a profession.
The audiobooks are pretty great, if you are into that.
I’ll second the audio books for First Law. Listened to them while driving across country from San Fran to Charlotte.
Thread inspired me to pick back up memories of ice and I’m three quarters done. This one is more coherent than the first two, and he is just starting to explain crap he should have explained in the first book. I do like the “big picture”, and imaginative elements, but the dialogue is broken. Nobody talks like that.
Thanks for the link, great story there.
I’m probably in the minority of people who enjoyed the first 3-4 Malazan books but thought the back half of the series became a bit of a mess. I finished it just to finish, but that last book tried to be and feel epic and failed on both fronts IMO. I’ve heard the new trilogy is a yawn-fest too, with really poor sales.
The new prequel trilogy is such a yawn-fest that Erikson is postponing the third book and moving on writing the Toblakai books, which is a fan favorite and bound to get more sales.
Corrections:
“A[n] assassin is indistinguishable”
“and if they’re [sic] are”
“when the plot thread[s] converge”
“what your elf wizard [is] going to say”
“you’ll have [the] opportunity”
You rock, @Mercanis! I can’t believe the rest of you jokers left me hanging with those typos still in there. Sheesh.
-Tom
And the first book of Daniel Abraham’s Long Price quartet is FREE right now!
Everyone should go get this right now. Let me establish the setting: the world is a fantasy world kind of based on shogun-era Japan rather than on the more typical medieval Europe. Teahouses abound and elaborate courtesy rituals, including codified and subtle hand positions, govern personal interactions. There are a class of magicians, but they’re called poets. By writing down a precise description of an abstract idea, like “Seedless” or “Stone Made Soft”, they can actualize and bind the idea as a living, intelligent entity called an andat with magical abilities in line with their idea. The andat might be best described as capricious faries, chafing against their bindings. Seedless, for instance, can make all of the seeds in a bale of cotton fall out of the bale–a magical cotton gin. He also is used to perform abortions. The implications are vast and well-explored throughout the novels.
The epic follows the lives of three intertwined characters. Each of the four (relatively short) novels takes place approximately 15 years after the previous one, starting when the main characters are all about 15 years old. This is the true genius of the story–the way these characters age, the arcs their personalities go through, the unexpected places they end up, the mistakes they make, their triumphs and tragedies over 4 or 5 decades of life. Very strong characters, a subtle and novel, but highly consequential magic system, strong world-building, and an unusual but richly realized setting. Again, my favorite fantasy epic.
Long Price Quartet is a fine read. Far from my fav fantasy series, but one of the better ones published this century (among the declining amount I’ve read).