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A review by willowbiblio
The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie
adventurous
dark
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.0
“The hate and the fury were gone, for the time being, but they had left a hole, and she had nothing else to fill it with.”
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Almost immediately I knew reading this would be a challenge for me. The writing felt like a fanfiction or like an extremely juvenile person wrote it. The actions and sounds were so odd and repetitive. Abercrombie used way too much prescriptive writing for thoughts, actions, and settings. The fight scenes were messy, chaotic, and extremely hard to follow.
While Glokta’s story inspired sympathy at first, his inner dialogue was exhausting. It kept interrupting the narrative and added almost no value for me. It was a lot of telling, not showing, which I guess is one of my main points of critique for this entire book.
Ferro was one of my favorite characters. To that point – I get the allure of intentionally writing unlikable characters, but many of them weren’t even believable.
I struggled to get into a flow with this book and really never succeeded. It made me want to avoid reading. I gave it two stars over one star (it was a close call) because the plot was actually extremely interesting. I liked the magical elements, like Logen speaking to the spirits, Bayaz displaying his power, and the foray into the Maker’s House. The Bloody-Nine switch was also quite intriguing.
I wish I had enjoyed the writing more because clearly Abercrombie created an interesting world, but executed it so poorly I just wanted it to be over much of the time.
——————————-
Almost immediately I knew reading this would be a challenge for me. The writing felt like a fanfiction or like an extremely juvenile person wrote it. The actions and sounds were so odd and repetitive. Abercrombie used way too much prescriptive writing for thoughts, actions, and settings. The fight scenes were messy, chaotic, and extremely hard to follow.
While Glokta’s story inspired sympathy at first, his inner dialogue was exhausting. It kept interrupting the narrative and added almost no value for me. It was a lot of telling, not showing, which I guess is one of my main points of critique for this entire book.
Ferro was one of my favorite characters. To that point – I get the allure of intentionally writing unlikable characters, but many of them weren’t even believable.
I struggled to get into a flow with this book and really never succeeded. It made me want to avoid reading. I gave it two stars over one star (it was a close call) because the plot was actually extremely interesting. I liked the magical elements, like Logen speaking to the spirits, Bayaz displaying his power, and the foray into the Maker’s House. The Bloody-Nine switch was also quite intriguing.
I wish I had enjoyed the writing more because clearly Abercrombie created an interesting world, but executed it so poorly I just wanted it to be over much of the time.