To pewnie nie jest typowa książka tego autora, ale tak się stało, że właśnie od niej rozpoczynam styczność z Abercrombiem. No i powiem szczerze, że głowy mi nie urwała.

Najpierw jednak zalety. Talent autora objawia się niewątpliwie w dialogach, które dobrze równoważą humor, sarkazm i ironię z relacjami między postaciami, a jednocześnie pozostają całkiem naturalne. Dużą przyjemnością jest wsłuchiwanie się (tudzież wczytywanie) w rozmowy naszych bohaterów, wyłapując ich konflikty przeradzające się w przyjaźnie, lub wyszukując niedopowiedzeń i ukrytych znaczeń.

Sama historia jednak wydaje się dosyć płytka i przede wszystkim mało angażująca. Śledziłem sobie losy Yarviego i jego kompanów i jakoś nie wytworzyło się we mnie głębsze przywiązanie do nich. Co więcej, sam Yarvi nie wydaje mi się specjalnie sympatycznym osobnikiem. Nie jest to może wymagane u głównego bohatera, bym mu kibicował, ale jednak w przeciętnej powieści przeszkadza dodatkowo.

Czuję, że autor ma duży potencjał, który tu nie został w pełni wykorzystany. Może więc dam mu jeszcze szansę w przyszłości.

Joe Abercrombie's talent is to make an experience so real that you feel you're there.

He turns an incident when a boat, being portered over a mountain, slips its ropes and must be held fast by an exceptionally strong man a great personal cost, into something filled with tension and pain and sweat and stoic selfless bravery that bypasses analysis and hits your emotions like an injection of adrenalin to the heart

The Blade Itself is a difficult book to describe, because this book doesn´t really have a plot. Or the little plot that there is, is a kind of prologue to the subsequent books in the series. At least it feels that way. But this doesn´t make this a bad book. Simply because Abercrombie constantly kept me invested in the story by having created the most interesting and multilayered characters I have read about in a very long time.

We follow three main characters, who couldn´t be more different from each other. Jezal, a vain soldier, who is full of himself, Logan Ninefingers, a barbarian, who is tired of fighting, and Inquisitor Glokta, a former soldier, deeply scarred by torture, who has turned into a torturer himself (and who has the best inner monologues). Besides the three main characters, we follow a few other minor characters.

All of these characters have one thing in common: they are all morally grey to the fullest extent and Joe Abercrombie really indulges in subverting the expectations of the reader. You think you have a grasp on a certain character … well, think again. You can never be sure about these characters and their actions, which makes this such a compelling read.

This book is grim dark fantasy, so I was prepared for a fair amount of violence going into this novel. And there is violence, but not as much as I would have expected and the tone the novel is written in is wickedly funny at times. However, if you don´t like any kind of violence and gruesome behavior in your books, you should stay away from this read.

But I cannot wait to read the second book in this series.

I´m a bit surpirsed that I ended up liking this book as much as I did. This was really good.

Thankfully I have the remaining books of this series already sitting on my shelves, so I can continue on with it very soon.

Jezal scraped the last fair hairs from the side of his jaw and washed the razor off in the bowl. Then he wiped it on the cloth, closed it and placed it carefully on the table, admiring the way the sunlight glinted on the mother-of-pearl-handle.

He wiped his face, and then - his favorite part of the day - gazed at himself in the looking glass. It was a good one, newly imported from Visserine, a present from his father: on oval of bright, smooth glass in a frame of lavishly dark wood. A fitting surround for such a handsome man as the one gazing happily back at him. Honestly, handsome hardly did him justice. 

"You´re quite the beauty, aren´t you?" Jezal said to himself, smiling as he ran his fingers over the smooth skin of his jaw. And what a jaw it was. He had often been told it was his best feature, not that there was anything wrong with the rest of him. He turned to the right, then to the left, the better to admire that magnificent chin. Not too heavy, not brutish, but not too light either, not womanly or weak. A man´s jaw, no doubt, with a slight cleft in the chin, speaking of strength and authority, but sensitive and thoughtful, too. Had there ever been a jaw like it? Perhaps some king, or hero of legend, once had one almost as fine. It was a noble jaw, that much was clear. No commoner could ever have had a chin so grand.

Lol, this made me laugh. It´s such a fitting behaviour for this pompous peacock of a character.