Just finished Joe Abercrombie's The First Law trilogy: The Blade Itself, Before They Are Hanged, and The Last Argument Of Kings. The reviews for them on goodreads are slightly different to the one that follows, 'cause I wrote those as I went along, and this is more of an overview.
First off: I really did like this trilogy. It was different, it was absorbing, the characters were excellently fleshed out, and the touches of humour were very refreshing. On the other hand, I'm not so sure that it is the kind of revolution in fantasy that people insist on telling me it is. Yes, all the things mentioned before are there, and it's a break away from the usual Tolkienesque fantasy. And it's clever in the way it twists the fantasy tropes. But. I predicted nearly everything that would happen, including the cyclical nature of the story telling.
The first book was okay. I thought I couldn't see where it was going -- though I had predicted various things that did come to pass in the end. It was a good introduction to the characters and to the world, so I figured the plot would progress in book two. Instead, I felt like it was more intended for character building, particularly when the quest itself turned out to be pointless. There was action, of course, but none of it really meant anything, and in the moments I should've been tense, I wasn't, really. The action is well written and interesting enough, but... I didn't even feel a sense of anticlimax when they failed to find what they were looking for. The third book was more plotty, and more things got done, but then it kind of... fizzled out. There was a lack of resolution. Ends get tied up, and yet they don't. You sort of feel that just as Logen's story is cyclical, so will Bayaz's be, and that if you came to the world again in two hundred years, everything would be just the same. For me, that's not a satisfactory ending -- although it may well suit other people, because it is clever, in its way. But I'm not interested in the train chugging along round the tracks, I'm interested about what happens when the train meets a blockage it can't get past, and when, I guess, a new track is laid.
The characters are definitely the strong point of this trilogy, in that they're very real. The trouble is -- there's always trouble -- that they're all bastards. Every single one of them has flaws, except perhaps a couple of more minor characters that are actually pretty decent. Some of them try to be good people, and yet in the end always revert, or they're just your average I-do-what-I-have-to types. Or they drink a lot. Or they hit their sisters when they're drunk. I liked some of them anyway, but there is not a single real good person in the whole trilogy. That's all very well, but... there's something unsatisfying about that, for me. For some, I can imagine it being a plus!
I can't really be as enthusiastic about this trilogy as many people are. I do think it's a good read, and worth a try, and it definitely twists your Tolkienesque fantasy tropes round until they squeal.
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