SPOILERS:
Yeah, the Bayaz reveal was pretty damned awesome (and depressing). I loved how all of the characters were deeply, deeply flawed. Just like real people.
Sans spoilers but just echoing what Kalle and Ergo laid out, I was utterly compelled to read through the final book. Some great revelations and Abercrombie certainly isn’t one for taking the easy way out.
For my money though, he could satisfy my First Law jones by producing Glotka novels from here to eternity.
Absolutely. The torturer is the most sympathetic and interesting character, which alone says quite a lot about the books.
The message seems to be - what can change the nature of a man? Lots of stuff, but it still won’t help.
Finally finished up Last Argument of Kings last night and man it was a great way to end a series. Everyone ends up a bit different than you expect the cliched beginnings to put them at. You get the joys of people ending up well and others just ending up trapped by either their past or their present, with no way out. Oh yea. Spoiler, but Bayaz is an asshole! Sweet!
Very satisfying. Can’t wait for his followup novels.
Well, while it does not say it on this page, I got an email from Amazon saying Best Served Cold comes out July 29th. I have not been excited for a book release since the next ASoIaF was announced for 2006…2007…2008…2009…
I didn’t care for book 3. CONTINUE AND YE SHALL FIND SPOILERS.
I liked the first two well enough (I didn’t find them to be a revelation however), but book 3 basically felt like Abercrombie saying “look, SEE, I’M BREAKING FANTASY TRADITIONS” over and over and over. I enjoyed the well-foreshadowed Bayaz developments (and no, I didn’t see the depths of it coming either, and that worked well). But the rest of it either came off as forced or, breaking-genre-conventions for the sake of breaking them (and then doing it out of habit, because hey it got us this far).
The modest but fascinating character development for various characters in the first two books felt like nothing more than a fake out. It isn’t that I needed those characters to evolve into genre-standard versions of themselves (quite the contrary), or into better people, or any such thing. It’s that I needed a more significant payoff than “hahaha, psyche!”.
SPOILERS (DUH):
Just finished Last Argument of Kings, thought this series was absolutely fantastic. Well paced, and not stretched over 15 years like SOME other authors out there.
I thought most of the changes in the characters were well telegraphed. It was clear that Jezal was a changed man
The only character that I thought was totally one dimensional was Ferro, she basically seemed more like a feral animal than anything else.
I was really happy how the Quai situation turned out because it tied together well and for quite a while I was like “WTF is up with Quai?!” I had actually assumed the worse, i.e. typical genre bullshit of “Quai became jealous and ended up making a deal with the devil to satisfy his own aspirations” and was glad to find out that Abercrombie didn’t go that route.
I’m also glad that Logen ran instead of fighting at the end.
It was also interesting to see how the presumably “good” Bayaz hid his past or, once he became powerful enough, dismissed it, whereas the presumably “evil” Logen always readily admitted and even regretted his own past and never tried to sweep it under the rug. It was explicitly stated that he wanted a fresh start without his reputation.
The core messages that I got were:
- change can be hard
- it’s hard to change when we have inertia – our masters (Glokta), our reputations (Logen), our pride (Bayaz), our expectations (Jezal), our pasts (Ferro and Ardee).
- no such thing as good or evil. As Dow said, “Only thing more dangerous than a villain is the villain that thinks he’s a hero.” And of course Bayaz’ work was clearly for the greater good, but he’s also clearly an amoral individual, whereas Khalul is evil, but his anger (Bayaz’s despicable acts in the distant past) was legitimate.
Here’s what I left in the thread at BSC when I first finished the series:
SPOILERS for The First Law Trilogy & The Malazan Book of the Fallen (oh, and also The Ring Trilogy, I guess)
I recently read an interview with Steven Erikson, in which he revealed that he thinks Frodo should have died in Mount Doom - into the lava with the ring - Sam should have come down the mountain alone.
Now, I am not a fan of Tolkien at all (he has zero use for women, and all his work feels like wish fulfillment: oh, things were so much better in the before time) and so this alteration makes a lot of sense to me.
And Sam would still have come down the mountain.
I don’t want a frilly ending. In the Malazan series, I was devastated when Whiskeyjack died, but felt like he’d had a full arc, and other people - Quick Ben, Paran, Toc - still came down the mountain.
In Joe’s trilogy, I was devastated when Threetrees and Harding Grim died, but those deaths felt reasonable and, especially in Grim’s case, poignant.
I can get behind all the endings Joe prescribed for his characters - Logen & his pot, Ferro, Glokta, Ardee, - they all feel… well, fair enough, that’s life; no exchange, no complaints. But no one comes down the mountain. Collem West’s death just felt punitive. I could almost feel the author thinking “I’ll show these bastards”. It felt just as artificial as a frilly, everyone-survives ending.
It’s all subjective, sure. I get that. And if I don’t like it I know what to do with my $30 next time. Life isn’t all vomiting rainbows and sunshine, but it isn’t all misery and gloom, either. My thing is I need something to make me feel like the whole journey wasn’t a waste of time.
The trilogy was a great trip. I loved meeting those people. I was thrilled to find a fantasy author who is genuinely funny, and committed to detonating some of the tropes of the genre. I expect to be misunderstood and I don’t know how to state more clearly I didn’t want a ‘hollywood ending’. But when I got to the end, I sort of went “Huh… all that way.”
However, I still loved the series and have pre-ordered Best Served Cold.
I picked up Best Served Cold on Friday and started reading last night. Pretty good so far, all written in the same style. Lots of swearing.
Metta,
It feels like you’re being overly harsh or making it sound grimmer than it was. EVERY main character ended up in a situation no worse off than when they started. Bayaz became more powerful, Logen ended as he began (falling to survive on his own), Jezal ascended to king, Ardee ascended to a position of respect, Ferro gets her revenge, Glokta became Arch Lector, Dogman treaded water, and West was the only one who suffered a truly bad fate.
The Northerners kept dying because, well, that’s what they do. I expected one of them to die every other battle, that was the pattern that was established pretty early on.
That’s not all gloom and misery is it? The gloom and misery, if anything, was the general feeling of powerlessness of every single character – they were leaves caught in a current that was far beyond their understanding, but by and large the current actually took them to BETTER places, they just had no control over where.
In my mind I see the series progressing this way:
- Logen goes off to become the feared Bloodynine but as a hermit, the stuff of legend
- Bayaz disappears into the South to start slow cold war against Khalul
- Ferro becomes a new terrifying force that Bayaz helped create
- Jezal and Glokta combine forces to remove Bayaz from influence
- Khalul becomes a pivotal figure who, like Glokta et. al, has some sympathetic elements (i.e. he fully discloses just how bad Bayaz was in the past)
- The North devolves again into in-fighting and terror, especially with Black Dow in a position of power
- Terez’s family becomes a point of much bigger political influence.
- It would be cool if Tolomei and Yulwei escaped/were released
All that is pretty obvious stuff but would be cool to see. I think Jezal is too far along the arc of “The People’s King” to regress, especially if he bonds with Glotka, one of the people he most despised.
I disagree with this statement (of course people end up worse than they started because they’ve had glimpses of other possible lives: Ferro and Logen, for example) but even if your read of the series is accurate then my final comment still stands: Huh…all that way? for everyone to be no worse off than when they started. Lame.
I’m a little confused, what exactly were you expecting? The goal of the series wasn’t supposed to be about an epic arch a la the typical fantasy series, in fact at times it seemed almost explicitly about
Put another way, it wasn’t about the plot, it was about the characters, and the characters were in fact transformed in a lot of fairly substantial ways. Bayaz’s true nature came out, Jezal grew up, Ardee calmed down, Glokta learned compassion, Logen avoided becoming King Bloodynine…Dogman, Ferro and West were really the only semi-major characters that didn’t change all that much. And Ferro did “change”, but not in terms of character, just power. She had a chance to transform but because Logen didn’t follow her (or she him), it was a lost opportunity.
So as a pure character drive story I enjoyed it because the characters were the interesting part. But the overarching plot was explicitly described out as a borderline petty argument between two magi, no “save the world from evil zomg!!!” type stuff, which is the standard fantasy thing.
BTW, does Glotka remind anyone of Tyrion or is it just me?
It’s not just you. Also, thanks for the thread bump, my library has the new book in processing right now and I’m first on the reserve list :)
Why do the US publishers hate us. I keep reading of people about to go pick it up and hoping the date got pushed up. No such luck. July 29th it is.
SPOILERS AGAIN:
I did have a couple minor quibbles with the series btw:
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the witch/shanka arc wasn’t really explained, since it was always assumed that they were somehow directly tied to the Gurkhish problems. Specifically, the tie in was somewhat tenuous with the Feared being one of Glustrod’s boys. But it was never clear who the witch was, her relationship with Bethod, her relationship with the Feared (why did killing her make the Feared mortal?), the Shanka issue, etc. It was like “Bethod, Feared, and the Witch killed, let’s all ignore this thread here on out like it never happened”.
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Logen’s arc was really fractured, because he was clearly having rational thoughts about his past actions and what he wanted to do to make things better in the future, but the Bloodynine was clearly some kind of schizo break he’d have when angered enough in combat. I found it jarring that his Bloodynine episodes were the direct result of violence, but his Bloodynine “past” described events that were far more calculated. So in his case, it’s not clear if he needed therapy, meds, or just a new outlook on life. =) Everyone else just needed a new outlook on life. But even the cheeriest disposition wouldn’t solve the schizoid Bloodynine appearances.
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the accents of the Northerners made them all sound like Tennessee Confederates. “Aye, I reckon.”
Well, I wasn’t expecting you to keep moving the goalposts, but fair enough. Now I know what you’re about.