This final, slightly tortured review of Joe Abercrombie's The First Law Trilogy has left me in a bit of a quandary. The fact is I stayed up until two in the morning to finish it so it's certainly well-written, absorbing and blissfully pacey for the conclusion of a fantasy epic but, now that I'm done, I genuinely don't know what I think about it. Consequently this article will be less of a review than an extended pondering (with attendant rampant spoilering, for them as care).

Safe Reviewish Bits:

Last Argument of Kings feels for the most part like a better book than Before They Are Hanged, in that arguably less of it is absolutely pointless (please note we will be returning to that use of arguably' later). As ever, Abercrombie's dialogue is snappy, his action scenes are by far his greatest strength and if you were interested enough in his characters in book one you'll be equally interested in them now (Inquisitor Glokta still rocks my world). Although I haven't brought the Reading Canary to bear on this trilogy it's definitely safe to say that Last Argument of Kings isn't at all toxic and, quite frankly, if you've got this far into the series you'll probably be reading it anyway.


Discussion: Massive spoilers ahoy!

-
-
-
-

Violence (Yet Again)

As I have previously discussed at some length, my review of The Blade Itself was considerably gushier than my review of Before They Are Hanged, mainly because, in my general enthusiasm for the first book, I got all carried away about what I thought it was trying to say. In particular, TBI contains a lot of violence and amounts to quite a thoughtful exploration of the affect of violence on both individuals and the society they inhabit. Violence seems to be very much portrayed as an integral part of the world and, by extraction, as an integral part human beings. However, everyone is lessened by the violence which affects them and in which they participate: Glokta is profoundly broken, spiritually, emotionally and physically, by his experiences at the hands of the Gurkish; Logen, the survivor of incalculable battles, has nothing and nobody left to fight for; Colonel West ruins his relationship with his sister and his own self-respect by striking her; Ardee West is, herself, dealing with the consequences of her father's mistreatment. Throughout the first book, the reader is presented with different types of violence across a whole range of scales, from the very personal (West and his sister), to the politically necessary (Glokta's work for the inquisition), from public spectacle (Jezel's duel) to the vast and inconceivable destruction of the battlefield, and it all comes together really nicely to present a coherent and meaningful exploration of the subject. I'm not going to start bandying around terms like "transcends genre" but it does provide considerable depth and scope to the novel.

However, as the books progress this exploration becomes increasingly disjointed. Specifically, in TBI itself, the effect of violence on those it touches is always negative. Glokta, for example, draws no validation or illumination from his job; even the possibility of satisfaction in a task completed is denied to him by his constant question: "why do I do this?" Yet, in BTAH Jezel gets hit in the face with a mace and this improves his character immeasurably. Although we see in Last Argument of Kings that he is not so very different from the man he used to be before he got dragged on a Pointless Quest of Doom and hit in the face with a mace - he is still vain and selfish and foolish. However, the important thing is that he is different - he's not a saint or a hero, and he still makes mistakes and deludes himself as to his own merits, but he is undeniably a noticeably better man than he used to be. This strikes me as a rather peculiar message since the implication of it seems to be that certain types of people just need a good ol' mace in face.

Furthermore, TBI presents violence as embedded just as much in human beings themselves as in the culture to which they belong. Glokta is never shown as some kind of alien monster, detached from the rest of humanity by the acts he is capable of committing (or by the horrors that were visited upon him): very specifically he serves as a dark reflection of the person Jezel could so very easily become. Essentially, a possible Glokta lurks inside us all. However, in books 2 and 3, acts of extreme violence seem to become narratively "detached" from the characters who commit them. For example, when West kills the Crown Prince, it is described like this:

West had never in his life felt so calm, so sober, so sure of himself. He chose to do it. His right arm jerked out and his open palm thumped against Ladisla's chest.

Although the text emphasises that West chooses to murder Ladisla, there seems to be a gap between that decision and the physical act of pushing Ladisla off a cliff. West chooses. His arm commits the murder. Equally he does not murder Ladisla, a whole person, he connects only with a part of him (his chest). The whole scene creates an eerie impression of distance and detachment which has the effect of separating West from the act and consequently responsibility for it.

Logen is equally problematic for me. Although on the surface he's the "nicest" of Abercrombie's protagonists, being significantly less self-absorbed than most of them, it seems as if Abercrombie would like us to forget just how morally dubious he really is. For the flawed moral centre of an otherwise amoral book this might work but, by halfway through BTAH, while Logen is dispensing homespun wisdom (in rather lengthy speeches, I have to say), nursing the injured Jezel and bonking the demon chick, his mass-murdering instinct has been located in a force he, and the text, calls The Bloody Nine. I am relieved to note that this isn't literally an external force and works more as an extended metaphor for Logen's barbarian bloodlust; however it is nevertheless portrayed in such a fashion that, again, serves to distance Logen's acts from Logen himself. For example, there's a scene in BTAH where the Pointless Quest Party sit around the campfire discussing their mistakes and Logen contributes this:

When I was fourteen, I think, I argued with a friend. Can't even remember what about. I remember being angry. I remember he hit me. Then I was looking at my hands ... I'd strangled him. Good and dead. I didn't remember doing it, but there was only me there and I had his blood under my nails ... few years later, I nearly killed my father .... There came one winter that I didn't know who I was was, or what I was doing most of the time. Sometimes I'd see it happening, but I couldn't change it.

Arguably this can be seen as Logen having self-consciously divorced himself from his own worst side (or, to universalise it, perhaps it's some kind of address to the way violence changes all those who partake in it, separating them from themselves) but all of Logen's major fights use this split-perspective ('"Yes!" he hissed, and Logen laughed, and the Bloody-Nine laughed, together' - Last Argument of Kings) which means that it never really feels like Logen fighting, any more than it really changes your opinion of Logen to learn that he killed his best friend and nearly killed his own father. These aspects of his character don't feel real because we are never really allowed to see the truth and the reality of them. The Logen the reader knows, and cares for, is the Logen who tenderly looks after the whinging Jezel and who takes the time to penetrate (bad choice of word) Ferro's spiky exterior, not the rampant psychopath all other warriors fear.

There's an intriguing exchange between Logen and Jezel that occurs near the end of Last Argument of Kings:

"Alright. Tell me something, then. Am I ..." He struggled to find the right words. "Am I ... an evil man?"
"You?" Jezel stared at him, confused. "You're the best man I know."

This confused me because I wasn't sure how I was meant to take it. Jezel is, of course, quite stupid and not especially perceptive so I doubt readers are meant to lend much credence to anything he says. Is this, then, a further indictment of Jezel's foolishness - i.e. that he believes a mass-murdering, psychotic barbarian is the best man he knows? Or is it an indictment of the whole society i.e. that a mass-murdering, psychotic barbarian amounts to a good man in such an evil world. I mean, looking at it objectively, Logen is an evil man: his confession at the fireside reveals he has murdered people he ostensibly cared about for the pettiest of reasons. But given the fact that Logen is, as I have said, the most obviously sympathetic and the most obviously "nice" of the all the characters in The First Law Trilogy (I mean, he occasionally acts on behalf of other people, not just for his own survival and advancement), I do believe we are perhaps meant to take this statement from Jezel at face value.

Of course the more I dwell on it, the more I try to infuse it with meaning. Noticeably, Logen asks if he is an evil man (which is a question about morality) and Jezel replies that he is "the best man" he knows (which is a value judgement), not quite answering the question. However, if Abercombie is going to make subtle points about the way morals and merit interact he shouldn't be putting them in the mouth of a character for whom he obviously feels nothing but contempt.

This is the sort of meaningless inconsistency that plagues me throughout The First Law Trilogy and finds its truest expression in:

Jezel

By the time I finished Last Argument of Kings, I couldn't quite shake the conviction that Jezel was the victim of authorial malice. The three main characters in The First Law Trilogy are: an ex-golden boy torture victim turned torturer, a mass murdering psychotic barbarian and Jezel who, well, is a bit selfish and a bit shallow. Looking at it objectively, although he's not necessarily the most sympathetic of them (he's petty, he whinges, he's foolish and cowardly) he's certainly the least morally objectionable. He very explicitly wants glory and adoration and is, by nature, more concerned with the appearance of things than truth of them: he doesn't necessarily behave in a noble or worthy fashion, but he still nevertheless wants to be perceived as being noble and worthy. He treats Ardee West quite badly but, arguably, not as badly as her own brother does. It's hard to like Jezel - because he has an exaggerated opinion of his own worth which is a profoundly unloveable trait - but, compared to the others, he's the least flawed. I think most people are a bit like Jezel, actually: self-interested, arrogant, cowardly and occasionally capable of being something more.

By the middle of the third book Bayez (more about this character later) has manipulated Jezel into a position whereby he gets elected King of the Union; the final section of the book shows him repelling an invading force and learning that being a figurehead King is a completely hollow experience. The reason, we learn, that Bayez decided to make Jezel King in order to stabilise the Union was because Jezel looked the part and he knew Jezel was cowardly and easy to manipulate:

"I know that you would [obey] because although I know that you are arrogant, ignorant and ungrateful, I know this also ... that you are a coward. Remember that."

Jezel's attempts to be a good King (changing the laws on taxation, for example, to make them fair for everyone, regardless of status) are met with hostility and his final attempt to break free from Bayez's influence ends with him snivelling on the floor because Bayez is The Most Powerful Person Like Evar:

Jezel knelt there, clinging to the curtains like a child to his mother. He thought about how happy he had once been and how little he had realised it ... never in his life had he felt so alone. Son of Kings? He had no one and nothing. He spluttered and sniffed. His vision grew blurry. He shook with hopeless sobs ... he wept with pain and fear, with shame and anger, with disappointment and helplessness. But Bayez had been right. He was a coward. So most of all he wept with relief.

The point, of course, is that there are no happy endings for the characters in The First Law Trilogy: what little contentment is available comes from compromise and all power comes with a price. This is all very cynical blah blah blah. Logen, however weary and disillusioned he is, gets to be King of the North. And provided he works for Bayez, Glokta gets fistfuls of power to wield, and also he gets Ardee West. I was actually very happy with this - bitter crippled torturer gets the girl, oh yes!

But Jezel, on the other hand, really does get completely screwed: even his beautiful new wife (who he married for political reasons, naturally) turns out to be a lesbian who Glokta eventually blackmails into doing her wifely duty. Regardless of his moral fibre (and, really, I don't expect the good to be rewarded and the evil punished - I am well aware that The First Law Trilogy are not those sort of books), perhaps it is because Jezel is a weaker personality than either Logen or Glokta that everything goes so horribly wrong for him. Or, perhaps, it is an ironic twist on his superficial nature and his hunger for glory. But, nevertheless, I do feel that Jezel's fate and the way the text invites us to view him are unbalanced when set against the other, equally and if not more so, objectionable characters.

The thing is, I don't think Jezel is as bad as Abercrombie seems to think he is. The text relentlessly shows us scenes of Jezel snivelling, being rubbish, feeling sorry for himself and being stupid and/or arrogant but he does occasionally rise above that and attempt to be a better man. In the first book, when the whole council chamber are cowed into silence by Bethod's messengers, Jezel speaks - despite his terror. He genuinely tries to learn from experiences on the Pointless Quest. And in Last Argument of Kings, when he becomes King, he genuinely attempts to embrace the responsibility of it, subjugating his personal desires for the good of the Kingdom (he puts Ardee aside in favour of a political union, yes this is partly because he is also quite shallow but that doesn't diminish the fact he does it) and trying make life better for all citizens in the union. When the city is under siege he rallies the people and holds the city together, even participating in the desperate fighting until Bayez rebukes him for endangering himself.

Jezel's default position might be self-absorbed cowardice, but he also has the capacity to be more than that. Although far too flawed (human?) to be a hero, the fact that he occasionally behaves heroically in spite of his nature and in spite of the world around him strikes me as positive. The fact that he doesn't defy either himself or his world to be more of a hero strikes me as realistic. I don't like Jezel because he's not likeable but I don't think he deserves the contempt with which the text seems to treat him. Perhaps I'm reading too much into this but I do get the sense that Abercrombie can conceive of merit in Glokta's bitterness, Logen's barbarism and West's rage but that he genuinely despises Jezel. I'm not saying that he deserves more than he gets but the text leaves him crying on the floor, cowed and humiliated, covered in his own vomit and other even less pleasant substances. His self-delusions have been utterly destroyed and the voices of Jezel, Bayez and the narrative itself blend in their final condemnation of his cowardice and worthlessness.

It's Deja Vu All Over Again

But the major reason I'm not sure how I feel about The First Law Trilogy is the overall progression of the plot. Despite the fantasy sag that afflicted it during BTAH it's generally well structured; unfortunately that structure is, quite self-consciously, a circle. This is, in fact, one of the Themes of The First Law Trilogy: history goes in cycles and, thus, by the end of the third book the world has pretty much been reset to the way it was before everything went wrong in the first book, except that the names of people in positions of authority have changed. This is even reflected on a minute scale, as the book ends with Glokta teaching the first person we see him torture in the first book how to torture someone else, deliberately perpetuating even his own personal tragedy.

Part of me thinks this is quite cool and interesting.

But part of me also resents the fact that I poured quite a lot of time and energy into reading a series of books full of happenings that were completely pointless and meaningless.

I know that pointlessness is the point but ... still.

I also feel quite bad because it makes me wonder if I am guilty of fantasy snobbery, as I probably wouldn't dare to whinge about this sort of stuff had it occurred in a literary novel and would, instead, likely go on about it being really deep and cynical, man.

Part of the problem, I think, lies in the fact that pretty much the entire action of the novels turns out to be controlled, if not directly orchestrated, by Bayez the Magician who is The Most Powerful Person Like Evar pretty much unto tedium. I don't know whether it's a consequence of getting old and grumpy (older and grumpier) or just because they're a shit and lazy plot device, but as the years pass I grow increasingly disillusioned with Master Manipulator characters. I felt pretty much the same way about Littlefinger in A Song of Ice and Fire. It just strikes me as a stupidly easy way to have seemingly disparate plot elements come together in precisely the way you want without having to trouble yourself too much with tricky issues like plausibility or characterisation - and the final outcome of it, no matter how seemingly complex the manoeuvring, always feels hollow to me.

Part of the point of The First Law Trilogy, I suppose, is that Bayez has managed to retain power over the centuries and is able to re-establish that power base over the course of the books because everyone is too focused on their own private goals and desires. They accept the compromises Bayez offers because it is less risky than opposing him and concentrated opposition would require unity and trust and putting aside self-interest in favour of communal benefit.

And although this is, I suppose, moderately interesting and The First Law Trilogy is well-written enough to be enjoyable reading ... I nevertheless feel too ambivalent about its flaws and inconsistencies to be able to decide whether I would actually recommend it.