That’s called Glokta taking a hostage. Terez’s lifelong lover is bundled away by Practicals, and will be raped and tortured if Terez does not submit sexually to Jezal and PRETEND to be willing. If Glokta held the gun to Terez’s own head and she spread her legs for Jezal without physically fighting, is it still “willingly”?

This is not a one time thing, but ongoing for years on end.

She is not supposed to tell Jezal, or anybody that she is being raped. Or that she is not heterosexual.

In the end there are a couple of rape jokes. Like when Jezal thinks Terez is shy and nervous when she croaks out the lines Glokta told her to say when she’s actually probably miserable and terrified for the safety of her lifelong partner. Haha he’s so dim he doesn’t even know Glokta’s making her get raped by her. Haha. Then Jezal tells Glokta about how Terez was crying by the window all night afterwards and about how it’s probably because she is homesick and if he redoes the garden to look like Talins she will cheer up. The joke is that it isn’t because she’s homesick that she’s crying, it’s because all the choice she has is whether Glokta rapes her using Jezal as an unwitting dildo or rapes her lesbian bitch of a lover. Haha.

Did we really need to see Glokta rape to remind us he is not that nice of a person? Do we still get to enjoy his relatively happy ending after that?

Terez is rude, stuck-up, closed-minded, unreasonable, chronically dim and unkind. Much like Jezal was at the start of the Blade Itself. (Taking into account what we know about Ladisla, some of Terez’s behaviour can be explained, like when Jezal rubbed his boner on her arse, expecting her to service him because that’s what women are for, and she freaked out and physically assaulted him viciously, but it can’t justify how unreasonable and dim she shows herself to be after it’s become clear that Jezal isn’t actually going to rape her of his own volition) But while Jezal’s eventual tragic fate of being silenced, powerless despite a position of apparent prestige, trapped and forced to act against his principles (“But Bayaz, an NHS is a nice thing!” “Fuck you Jezal, socialism is for goodies and I am a villain! No hospitals for you!”) is treated as properly sad- It’s not, for example, a just comeuppance because he was a bit vain and snooty at the start- Terez’s fate, on the other hand, is treated like a joke.

That’s the difference. West is a tragic flawed character. Jezal is a tragic flawed character. Terez is a frankly offensive caricature of a shrill manhating lesbian who is institutionally raped into necessary functional heterosexuality.

It really makes Abercrombie hard to read. He does improve in his portrayal of female characters in Best Served Cold, and even with The Heroes though. I get the impression from his blog that he was writing quite naively in The First Law and now he knows a bit better and I’m glad that he’s a bit more self aware about it now.

Obviously you were reading a different book that I was if “rape” crosses a line.

Glotka lost any morality he ever had back in prison, this just illustrates his ruthlessness again to get his mission accomplished.

so, thanks.

Glokta is an evil person. He does bad things. That’s how the character is, from the first page of the book. In fact, I think we should agree that from all the victims that went through Glokta’s hands, Terez was the one that had the best outcome.

As for laziness, guilty as charged.

1) He clearly did not know or bother to look up the name of the antagonist from the South. This just suggests sloppy reading or laziness.

2) He seemed clearly disturbed by a “rape” scene, which never occurred. Glotka threatened to have the Queen’s lesbian lover raped, but this actually never occurred.

Glotka did a lot of other terrible things (threatened children, tortured friends, sent innocent men to their death, etc.) He’s a torturer. That’s what he does.

3) I applaud the “gritty” writing of the book. It would have been politically correct to introduce 2-3 Xena type waifs for gender balance, but less interesting.

4) The reviewer seems to feel that female characters were specifically designed with imperfections. A closer reading would reveal that all the male characters have some sort of imperfection as well. There are no Tom Hanks genteel professors in this world, nor Harry Potters to eat biscuits and whine about Ginny.

5) I would whole heartily recommend this book to any female reader who is interested in reading gritty fantasy fiction.