A review by marsius
The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie

4.0

Individual books in series often don't quite feel like a whole. Second books in trilogies are famously often just journeys or the book where the band splits up and the entire thing is them getting back together. The first book of a series, though, could almost always survive as a not only a standalone novel, but even a good standalone novel. The Blade Itself is not that. Rather, although it's the first book, it in no way feels like a completed work. Rather, this is more like Volume I of a three-volume novel, and any review thus feels incomplete and ill-informed, as this is a work that clearly has to be judged entirely as a 1,600-page whole. The writing is fun, the characters deep, and the plot moving, though, so definitely worth the ride so far.