Nearly one year ago I reviewed the second book in Joe Abercrombie’s First Law series, Before They Are Hanged, calling the writing misogynist. I more or less expected no one to pay attention to my blatherings on the internet, but Mr. Abercrombie wrote up a response. If he hadn’t, I doubt anyone would have noticed. I’ve just now finished the last book in the First Law trilogy, and my feelings about Abercrombie’s writing are just that much more solidified. He’s a talented, engrossing writer, who really pisses me off in how his writing treats women.

For those who don’t like being spoiled, run away now. I may liberally spoil this book and will start revealing plot details of the previous books in the series next paragraph.

At the end of the previous book, a mismatched band of questers returned to Adua, the capital of the Union, having failed to retrieve the Seed at the far end of the world. In the north the Union battles with Bethod, King of the Northmen. And in the south the Gurkish empire prepares to invade. The King is old and frail and has no heirs.

There are essentially three major plots in this book. The war against Bethod in the north is the first. Thought dead by the Northmen since near the beginning of the first book, Logen Ninefingers returns from the quest to join the fight. The plan is to head up a narrow valley to a fortress in the hills, luring Bethod behind them. Then, after a period the Union forces will follow Bethod and squeeze him between the two. The plan goes awry though when Lord Marshal Burr (head of the Union army) dies, and the two generals in charge let their rivalry prevent them from finishing Burr’s plan.

Plot two is a whole bunch of smaller plots. It’s all the politicking and backstabbing going on in the capital leading up to the death (by old age possibly) of the King. The Inquisition led by Arch Lector Sult is opposed by High Justice Marovia. The various lords contend with each other. The Magus Bayaz has his fingers in everything. Most of this plotting goes on around Superior Sand dan Glokta, who I thought was the most interesting character. He’s part of the Inquisition, the institution that investigates threats against the King and the empire. It’s just what you might think it is. Torture. Confessions. Witchhunts. Etc. The point is not really to find the truth, but rather to keep an iron hand on the empire’s subjects when necessary.

In the middle, the King dies and the Bayaz’ machinations put Jezal dan Luthar into the throne. He’s the fop who went on the quest with Bayaz, along with Ferro Maljinn, Logen Ninefingers, and a couple others. In other words, he’s now a puppet king for Bayaz.

The last major plot is the conflict between Bayaz and … the bad wizard of the south whose name I forget which I’m not going to bother to try to find. See, Mr. Bad Wizard has engineered the Gurkish empire to invade the Union so his Hundred Words (minions who have broken the First Law and so can’t be killed) can get their hands on Bayaz.

To spoil it all, Collem West (the intrepid Colonel from the previous books) becomes Lord Marshal just in time to save the Northmen from Bethod. Then they all head back to Adua to fight the invading Gurkish. Glokta is torn between allegiance to Sult (who wants Jezal out of the king’s throne) and bankers to whom he owes money (who want Jezal as king for stability) but decides to go against Sult in the end. Jezal isn’t much of a king at first, but starts to assert his authority against Bayaz and others. The army returns just in time to route the Gurkish, Bayaz stumbles on the Seed and uses it to destroy the Hundred Words, and the Union is preserved.

And then there’s 90+ pages of wrap-up. Which is where I got well and truly pissed off. Throughout the book, again there are only three female characters who get much print. Ferro Maljinn plays mostly a bit part this time around. Ardee West by now is a drunk and bitter woman who carries on an affair with the soon to be king Jezal. And lastly we meet Queen Terez about halfway through, an arranged marriage to cement an alliance between Jezal and the subject kingdom Styria. She doesn’t much like Jezal, but she’s a dutiful daughter. After the wedding though, she can barely stand to be in the same room with her husband.

What pissed me off is the plot in the wrap-up where Glokta engineers the rape of the Queen. Glokta is at this point now the Arch Lector of the Inquisition. No heir means succession problems, so Glokta throws Terez’ lesbian lover into the prison to get Terez to fuck her husband and produce an heir.

Oh, it fits with the story all right. No one escapes unscathed from Abercrombie’s story. Glokta is a heartless bastard. The point was already driven home many many times to the point it was almost monotonous. I’m in pain. I’m a cripple. I don’t give a shit what happens to others cause of what happened to me! Over and over and over again Glokta does truly despicable things. Topping it off with rape. I fail to see what that added on top of everything else. It seemed particularly gratuitous. Particularly with the following paragraph:

Glokta found that he was almost smiling as he watched the ugly scene. I may be crippled, and hideous, and in constant pain, but the humiliation of beautiful women is one pleasure I can still enjoy. I do it now with threats and violence, instead of with soft words and entreaties, but still. Almost as much fun as it ever was.

Glokta isn’t portrayed as a hero. But he is portrayed as necessary for the preservation of order. I get that Abercrombie is trying to create a ruthless world of grey, where no one is good, where everyone has huge character faults. He took it one step too far for me.

Which is a shame, because Abercrombie is a really good writer. His characters are different. He got me to understand the characters’ motivations like few writers have been able to. Less unique perhaps, but no less talented for it, is his ability to put together an extremely complex plot where everything makes sense. I hope his skill isn’t tied only to worlds of extreme violence and, I’ll put to electrons again, misogyny. Because I won’t be reading any more of his books set in this world, nor any where he uses the same schtick. The writing may be good, but it goes against my morals. No Best Served Cold for me.

A few other blogged reviews:

• Neth Space
• Adventures in Reading
• BillWardWriter.com

Title: Last Argument of Kings
Author: Joe Abercrombie
Series: The First Law; 3
Imprint / publisher: Pyr / Prometheus
Format: Paperback
Length: 636 p.
Publication date: August 2008
ISBN-13: 978-1-59102-690-7

Today’s Sunday Salon is brought to you by two cups of black currant tea, one mug of French press coffee, and Joe Abercrombie.

One little detail before I get on with my thoughts on the book. The title is a misnomer. Only one person gets hanged in the book. There is no they involved on the recipient end of the hanging. He’s sold you a bill of goods. Okay, done with the spoilering.

Before They Are Hanged is the second book in Joe Abercrombie’s debut fantasy series, The First Law. I say debut because that means he’s up for some prize at the World Science Fiction Convention and he’s been campaigning to get it. I’m not a member and don’t vote. After going to NorWesCon one year, I shall be staying away from any event where fandom dresses in costume. Never again. But I digress.

Continuing the series, Before They Are Hanged is three stories in one. Unlike the first book, there’s only a bit of interaction between the plots. One plot concerns First of the Magi, Bayuz, and his band of intrepid and mismatched explorers as they journey to the edge of the world to find the Seed, the remnant of the underworld which can be used as a great weapon. Bayuz intends to use it against Khalul, the prophet of the Gurkish south continent who has incited his followers to revert to ancient evil ways. This story is told from the perspectives of Jezal dan Luthar, an overconfident arrogant sword-wielding nobleman, Logen The Bloody Nine Nine-Fingers, a brutish and brutal expatriate Northman, and untrusting Ferro Malthiss, former slave, whore, and angry killer of the Gurkish. Sub-plot number one is mainly a tale of will they grow up and get along, this malcontent band as they travel westward across the old continent.

Tale number two concerns Sand dan Glokta, now Superior of the King’s Inquisition of Dagoska. Dagoska is a city situated on a lonely peninsula on the southern continent, separated and far from the Kingdom’s main territory. He’s been given a King’s Writ to take charge of the city, not just the inquisition, and defend it against the Gurkish Empire which threatens to take Dagoska. Not only do they have an army, the Gurkish Empire also owns traitors on the Dagoska ruling council. Who best to find a traitor than the Inquisition??

And story number three is the kingdom’s fight against the Northmen led by Bethod, newly installed as their first king. This one is told from the point of view of Colonel West, a commoner with a commission in the army, a truly unusual circumstance. Other folks that get the story told from their eyes are a band of Northmen exiles led by Rudd Threetrees, former opponent and companion of Logen Nine-Fingers. Wily and battle-hardened, their aid may be all that keeps the army from being routed by the cunning Bethod.

Abercrombie’s strength is his characters. There are fewer points of view in the second installment, which makes for better continuity. Those on the journey west with Bayuz are fun, but we’ve seen their like in many fantasy tales before. They are a bit less interesting than I wanted, Nine-Fingers in particular. In book one I remember him as extremely world-weary, almost having lost his will to live. He’s gained some of that back, and comes across as the reticent wise veteran here. I have a big complaint about Ferro that I’ll get to later. I liked Jezal dan Luthar though. Again, fairly stock archetype, but Abercrombie does a great job of taking us from the arrogant young nobleman to the wiser soldier at the end. There’s no one magic point where the transformation occurs, and he retains parts of his youthful ways even to the end. He’s done pretty well.

Sand dan Glokta gets to show a bit more human side this outing. We’ve always known he’s a self-aware torturer. He knows he’s doing bad things, and he does them anyway. That’s always been the beauty of Glokta’s character. It makes him even more monstrous than the pain-loving Practicals in his employ. Glokta doesn’t do these things because he must, but because it’s his job and he’s good at it. He has a conscience, a slight one, but ignores it. It’s a tightrope for a character, but it makes him a good anti-hero. One I became invested in, despite what he does. I read somewhere that there is a non-series book to be set in this world. It wouldn’t be too bad a book to tell Glokta’s story, though there’s a lot of danger there since it would be a prequel.

I’m going to skip the soldiers in the north. They were well done, but I just don’t have much to say about them.

I do have something to say about the female characters in the book though. The word that comes to mind when I think about them is misogynistic. I know it’s a loaded word to throw out there, but I can’t think of anything else. The vast majority of the characters in the book are male. Contrast that with Lois McMaster Bujold’s Paladin of Souls which I didn’t like all that much, but which included many female characters. I can think of only four in this book, three of them minor. The one to get the second most screen time is Cathil, who serves little purpose except as a semen receptacle. One of the big parts of Ferro’s character is similar, she’s a former slave/prostitute who must shut out a life of being used sexually and uses that to fuel her rage. Female character three is West’s sister Ardee. While not a bimbo, she spends the entire book waiting for her male saviors. Practical Vitari is a pain-loving torturer list her co-workers. But, minor and unimportant spoiler here, she’s revealed to have a soft spot for her multiple children. All four women defined by very stereotypical attributes. An argument can be made that anything modeled on Medieval times should follow Medieval culture, a very patriarchal one. But if we get to build a fantastic world, one with majic and invented geographies and societies created from the mind, could we not discard the typical female roles for a while? I know it’s too late for Last Argument of Kings, as that book is probably already on the shelves in England.

I do like the book, even if not as much as the first in the series. The westward journeying folks got tiresome. But the war in the north was a decent page-turner. Abercrombie kept the action moving. And Sand dan Glokta down in Dagoska is riveting read. I didn’t know how either plot would turn out. I half-expected the army to lose one or both wars and see the kingdom overrun. You’ll have to read to find out. But usually you read those kinds of stories and get an immediate feeling that while the babyfaces will have a rough go of it, there’s no way they can lose except temporarily. That would be the end of the story. David Anthony Durham’s Acacia has that quality. When his empire falls early, you know the second half of the book is going to be all about how they regain it. Abercrombie puts you in the place of peopel who deserve some to lose, and you don’t feel as if there’s some great comeback necessarily coming, because the protagonists aren’t by their nature the right kind of people.

Despite the negatives, which you can blame on me being a burned up shell of a man, I recommend the book after you’ve read the The Blade Itself. Joe Abercrombie has talent.

Late-breaking addition: Joe Abercrombie’s response.

Title: Before they are hanged
Author: Joe Abercrombie
Series: The first law; 2
Imprint / publisher: Pyr / Prometheus (originally Gollancz in the U.K.)
Format: Paperback
Length: 539 p.
Publication date: March 2008
ISBN-10: 1-59102-641-5
ISBN-13: 978-1-59102-641-9
LC classification: PR6101.B49 B45 2008

Well, I thought this was a pretty good fantasy novel. High praise from me, considering that I generally tend to dislike a lot of fantasy writing. Joe Abercrombie outdoes lots of his fellow genre writers, but I do have a few knocks against the book. But it’s definitely good enough to get me to want to read the second book in the series Before They Are Hanged when Pyr puts it out. The Blade Itself comes out officially on September 4th I think, but it’s available now on Amazon. I got my ARC winning a contest over at Fantasy Book Critic (one of these days I should look into seeing whether any publishers will do giveaways here…). It’s the first Pyr book I’ve enjoyed. A number of their other books have been so promising, but still have fallen short. I suppose it’s tough to break the hold that Tor seems to have on the speculative fiction genre reading market.

One of the things that I tend to dislike about a lot of fantasy is its focus on the elite: nobles, wizards, and bright pure fairy-elves (or conversely on their evil counterparts). Rarely does fantasy seem to have as it’s main characters regular people. Abercrombie’s book does not focus on the greatest of the land (with one exception). Logen Ninefingers is a fallen soldier, discarded by the King of the Northmen, barely eking out a life in the lands north of the Northmen. Jezal dan Luthar is of noble blood, but he’s barely more than a fop. Supremely selfish and constantly congratulating himself on his bloodlines, Jezal will likely get his ass kicked in the upcoming fencing Games due to lack of effort. Sand dan Glokta is a former winner of the same games, but was captured in a war with the Gurkish empire to the south and later returned a tortured and broken man. No longer revered on his return, he’s taken a position with the King’s Inquisition, which is exactly what you think it is.

There are other characters, but Abercrombie focuses on these guys. In fact, the first time a chapter came from the point of view of someone else, I thought it was pretty jarring. The characters aren’t exactly likable, but they aren’t quite anti-heroes either. Following Glokta’s progress as he tortures confessions from the Inquisitions enemies, I actually identified with him and wanted him to succeed. That’s hard to do. It takes some good character writing to accomplish that. I think part of the key is that none of these characters have evil motives. Much like a hard-boiled noir detective, they simply do what they do.

One irritant though is that lack of motive. I will say right up front, that this book has no conclusion. That’s not always a bad thing in series fantasy writing. I know several people who prefer long series which no conclusion until the end. I don’t like it, but I can put up with it for good writing. I’d prefer my series to be separate yet intertwined stories. This is not a story in itself. It is the first part of one. But it would have been so much more nice if Abercrombie had started giving an inkling of the purpose that these character would be put to sometimes in the first hundred or two pages instead of page 470+ (out of 539). This is all back story. Even at the end, we don’t know what the purpose is for the band. We have but a glimpse. If it wasn’t for such good characters and some pretty decent writing, I’d have given up for that.

I’ve noted before that I do not like random, unexplained pieces in the stories I read. But neither do I like over-explained or awkwardly exposed points either. The Blade Itself contains a great example of how to do this right. One of the main characters is Jezal dan Luthar. When he’s introduced, he’s training to be in a big martial contest. Other characters who briefly make appearances are named Coster dan Kault, Hersel dan Meed, and Rush dan Thuel. Not everyone has dan in their name though. Here’s how the meaning for this is revealed:

I’m not sure that I like being the subject of your bet, said Jezal sharply.

I’m not sure I give give a damn.

This is serious.

No it isn’t! she snapped. For my brother it was serious, he had to do it! No one even notices you if you don’t have a dan in your name, and who’d know better than me? You’re the only person who’s given me the time of day since I got here, and then only because Collem made you. I’ve precious little money and no blood at all, and that makes me less than nothing to the likes of you. The men ignore me and the women cut me dead. I’ve got nothing here, nothing and no one, and you think you’ve got the hard life? Please! …

In most other books, the narrator will tell the reader that dan is a marker of nobility. Or the main character will think to himself, My family is noble! We’ve had dan in our name for 35 generations! during a soliloquy while he’s sitting at the dinner table, contemplating when he’ll take over as head of household from his father. Or something else bland, dry and obvious within three pages of being the first character introduced with dan in the name. This outburst comes on page 187 (my copy) after Jezal has been riding his privilege upbringing for a number of chapters. A minor unexplained item, exposed well. This is great writing. It’s only on the rare occasion in this book that any character monologues to reveal a major plot or setting point.

Title: The blade itself
Author: Joe Abercrombie
Series: The first law ; 1
Imprint / publisher: Pyr / Prometheus
Format: Advance readers copy
Length: 539 p.
Publication date: September 2007
ISBN-10: 1-59102-594-X
ISBN-13: 978-1-59102-594-8
LC classification: PR6101.B49 B57 2007