The Blade Itself is a book I see often recommended to epic fantasy enthusiasts. It was a good book with some really immersive and exciting scenes, but I did have some major issues with the way it was constructed. I finished this book a week before I'm writing this review, so forgive me if I get some details wrong in this review.

The story is set between three warring nations. There'd recently been a war between two of them and now a third one is coming in to restart the violence. Up north it a completely uncivilized, barbarian nation where people travel in small bands and there's an extreme amount of violence. There's a king and government and all that, but the place has pretty much fallen to anarchy. I don't remember in full detail, but when I think "Northman" I think violence. Same with the nation of Gurkhul (sp?) in the south. Then you've got the civilized nation, The Union, somewhere in the middle. Each produces its own protagonist/pov character for the story.

From the north we have Logan Ninefingers, "The Bloody Nine", aptly named for his missing middle finger on one hand and all the people he's murdered and killed and defeated in the war. Now he's wanted by his king and on the run. His family was killed by things/people (I'm a little unclear on that) called Shanka, and in another shanka attack, his friends were killed and he was separated from them. Logan is wandering around half dead (he's always kinda half dead, getting into fights, just struggling to survive in his violent homeland) when a dude named Malacus Quai finds him and says he's got to bring Logan to Bayaz, the First of the Magi, a legendary wizard. Logan is kind of a simpleton and goes along with him. Then Bayaz takes him to the Union's capital—again, Logan doesn't ask questions. The Union had just been at war with the North probably a decade ago, so people are really spooked to see a Northman, a brutish savage with scars galore, roaming in their civilized streets. That's about it for Logan's story. He's kind of the big sweatheart softie, and he saved Malacus when Mal was sick and dying, so he's a pretty stand-up guy despite his bloody murder streak. We know he only killed to survive, or at least now he only kills as a means of survival, not for fun. He's got a good heart.

From Gurkhul we get Ferro, the most savage bloodthirsty character ever created. This woman got her family killed by one of the nations, can't remember. Union? North? one of them. But now she's out for revenge, and that means murdering every single person ever, including children. Like, I understand where she's coming from and her desire for bloodlust, but the moment she said she's going to kill every last person standing including women and children and civilians, she lost me. No sympathy for her. This is going to be a recurring theme in this review, so stay tuned.

In the Union we have two pov characters—Captain Jezal Luthar and Inquisistor Sand dan Glokta. Glokta is the greatest character of my life, so I'll save him for later and talk about Jezal first. Jezal is this young soldier who's never seen war, he's an arrogant, narcissistic brat. Think Gaston. he's training for The Contest, a yearly fencing tournament, whose winner gets glory and favor with the king and all that. Jezal falls for the sister of his friend/mentor, West, which is a problem because Jezal is a noble and the sister is a poor commoner. There's a bunch of romantic angst there blah. Jezal sneaks around with her despite West's demands to keep away from his sister. Angst.

Overall, Jezal is a narcissistic asshole who fawns over himself in the mirror, looks down on and degrages everyone if they're below his social rank. It was so weird because we'd get scenes of him being the victim or having some kind of struggle, and I'd sympathize with him. Then he'd sprout some moronic drivel of how gorgeous he was or how much better he was than everyone else, how he deserved everything in the world because he was a god. And then I was like f*** you Jezal, go shove a sword up your a**h**** and fall off a cliff. So reading any chapters in his pov were extremely difficult because he was so flipping awful.

Now finally we come to Glokta! He is hands down my favorite fictional character of all time. He was the reason I keep reading. Actually, side note, I read maybe the first 100 pages but it was getting so dull with stupid Jezal that I actually put the book down and started something else. But thoughts of Glokta wouldn't leave me alone, and I actually picked up the book and kept going. I'm glad I did because then the book really picked up and Glokta didn't fail to impress me yet again.

So who is Sand dan Glokta? Only one of the most unique and psychologically fascinating and funny fantasy characters ever! (of the books that've I've read, of course). So this guy's first chapter opens with him trying to walk down some stairs. Mundane, right? No! Stairs are a huge adventure for this man (and he even says that line himself later in the book) because he was brutally TORTURED for two whole years when he fought in the war. He was the best fighter in the Union, won some Contests, and was seriously highly regarded by everyone. Then he got taken prisoner. His leg was hacked up, his teeth chiseled out (in an alternating pattern, so he can't even chew with them because whenever there's a tooth on the top, it's missing from the bottom), he has to sit down to pee (so figure out why that's necessary and reacquaint yourself with your lunch), and he has extremely painful spasms all throughout his back and body. He can't bow or bend over without extreme pain (and unfortunately he has to do a lot of bowing in his job), he needs to get carried out of bed in the mornings, and everything is just a mess. The man reads like a 90-year-old invalid, but he's only THIRTY-FIVE. When I found out his age, I stared open-mouthed at the book. So here's a man who was the top of the world and everyone adored him, and now he's a walking monster with no friends and no glory.

But here's the real fascinating part about him: he's a torturer. Yes, folks, the man who was mutilated for years in the enemy's prison now does that very act to others to earn a living. And he's really, really good at it. The book never showed us the actual acts of torture he committed, just the set-up, the talk before and pulling out the instruments, and then it faded before the action started. But man, Glokta is terrifying. You'd think this would make me hate him, but on the contrary, his psychology is fascinating. Everyone is afraid of him. He walks down the street and people run at the sight of him, no one sits next to him in public, and they try not to make eye-contact because they're afraid of him. (We got to know that through Jezal's pov when he was seriously freaked out by being in the same room as Glokta, and anyone who makes freaking Jezal piss his breeches is a friend of mine!) Glokta is FUNNY as hell too. He's got such a great sense of humor, especially about his conditions. He's like Toph's blind jokes, and makes everyone around him uncomfortable on purpose and then has a good laugh at their expense. When Jezal was losing in the Contest, Glokta was the only person in the whole stadium who was sitting there laughing his butt off because he hates Jezal as much as I do.

Seriously, Glokta is the greatest character ever. I love him. He is (or was) an epic fighter, brutally tortured and got his entire body mutilated, can barely walk, stairs are his worst enemy, chairs are his best friend, he hates Jezal, he cracks jokes despite his miserable life situation, and he's really good at getting information out of bad people. What even more plays into his sympathetic character is that he's being manipulated in his job, so even if he does do some questionable things, we know he thinks he's doing it for the right reasons.

Okay, enough on the characters. The writing. It was meh. It felt like the draft hadn't gone through final pruning and polishing. There were a lot of filler phrases and words and sentences that I would've red-penned out of there to better streamline the scenes. Now, it wasn't bad writing by any means. Abercrombie knows how to tell a story, but I think the writing definitely needed some tightening. It's a 500 page book, too, so it could've used for some major trimming.

The big problem I had with the story beyond the unsympathetic characters (not including Glokta) was that there were so many plot threads opened up but never resolved. We got a lot of hints of things, such as Logan being able to talk to spirits and it gets mentioned a couple times later, but then we never see that again even though it was built up to be important and I'm sure it'll be important in later books. But there was no payoff to it. The entire book we're following Logan with Bayaz to do a thing—but we never concretely find out what the thing is. Actually at the very end of the book, Bayaz finally reveals his intentions to form a group with Ferro, Jezal, and Logan and set off to do ... something. Also not specified. That really bothered me because you can't set up Chekovs guns like that and not have them go off in the book. I can forgive one or two elements that might not come into play until later books, but everything the story built up to was: "okay, you're going on a vague mission to do a vague thing. The end."

Many people praise Abercrombie's action scenes, but I hated them. They were dull, personality-less laundry-lists of actions. There were pages of these violent episodes sometimes, and I honestly could skip over all the middle parts and just read the last few lines of those scenes to find out who won. A good action scene reveals something or changes something about the characters fighting, so we're forced to read and not skip over them. When a scene is pure violence for the sake of violence, there's nothing chaining me to the book and saying: "this is important. You WANT to read this and not miss a word of this scene." That's a good action scene, when I can't look away. Abercrombie's fight scenes were dull lists of actions.

Overall, it was a compelling read that kept my attention for the majority of the time. Glokta was the winner here. If he hadn't been in the book, I would've put it down a few chapters in. I think the writing and storytelling could've been tighter, the pov characters not as despicable and easy to hate, but there were a lot of great moments in this book. It felt like just 500 pages of set-up for the real story about to come. I'm not happy that I got 500 pages of set-up rather than a full-arc story, but it was still interesting to read, and Glokta won my sympathies 100%.

3.5/5 stars