Before They Are Hanged [52 Books #14]

Middle book. Sigh. Lots of stuff happens, and I'm still surprised this is Abercrombie's first published work. He's quite good at creating distinct characters and telling an interesting, if a bit standard, fantasy story. The plot is pared down to what he can handle, I believe, and it's a wise choice for a new author. The real love is in the viewpoint characters and the feel of the world he made.

We see his world through the eyes of a northern warrior who's seen more than a decade of constant tribal fighting and has nothing to show for it but scars; the scout from the warriors old band, who believe him dead as they avoid the new chief hunting them down; a woman obsessed vengeance and avoiding any entanglements. Then the last three viewpoints are from three soldiers all on different paths: one traditional soldier, an aide to a marshal leading an army to chase the northern chief out of the kingdom, a former soldier who's hunt for glory a decade ago left him imprisoned, tortured, crippled, and who now serves as a master inquisitor and torturer, and a noble soldier who gets dragged onto the big magic quest and just wants to go home and fight a real war and earn everyone's admiration.

Each view is different, each has a unique voice, and I'm impressed by Abercrombie's debut. The big quest to find the magic widget is more a side show, with the occasional fight, that takes up a third of the book. The other two stories involve a city under siege by the big bad empire and the army – badly needed at the siege – chasing in the north on a punitive expedition against an upstart chief-turned-king raiding villages. There's a deeper plot behind everything, of course, but the true connection among each thread is the violence; Abercrombie keeps the story moving through sheer brutality. No story doesn't have a good fight every few chapters, interspersed with arrivals in new places (and new places to fight) and recovering from the last fight. The fight scenes are good – although all the large scale battles are tossed off-camera – and varied. There's not really and epic magic battles, all are good swords and bows and straight-up fights. There's only four battles with any magic effects, and none come off as flashy or cheap. No false victories are pulled out from nowhere, the characters, as is common in middle books of trilogies, go through some bad times and have no clean victories.

Abercrombie's First Law trilogy holds up with part two. It's a non-gritty realistic style story, much slogging through mud and close combat scenes and there's no problem that can't be solved with a good knife. Or a really big knife. Possible a lot of big axes for tough problems.

“Forgive your enemies, but not before they are hanged.”