Say one thing for the First Law Trilogy, say it's far from your typical fantasy series.
With The Blade Itself, Joe Abercrombie creates a unique fantasy world so dark and manipulative, that it has produced skewed versions of the stereotypical fantasy heroes. The amazingly well-crafted characters all blur traditional moral lines for their own purposes, creating unpredictable plot twists and reinforcing the underlying principle of the series that the ends always justify the means. Every character is fatally flawed in their own ways, but the fairytale notion of justice is scarcely found in the series.
Sand dan Glokta is a scheming torturer with nothing to live for but his hatred of everyone and everything. Once a rash young soldier, Glokta was captured by his country's enemy and held for years as a prisoner before being ransomed back. Years of torture left him crippled, spasmodic, and hateful, yet he survived to work his way up in his nation's Inquisition out of pure spite. His attention to details, capacity for bluffing and taking risks, and utter ruthlessness allow him to plot his way through any task and justify anything he needs to do to succeed. His character is hard to sympathize with, and is by no means likable, but one can't help but respect his cunning and above all, his perseverance.
Jezal dan Luthar is a parody of the chivalrous knight that can sometimes be found amongst sword and sorcery. He is a loud-mouthed buffoon who's rich family bought his position as a captain in the Aduan army. When we first meet Jezal his goals in life are to marry rich and get drunk while playing cards with his fellow officers every night. Jezal starts off as an infuriating character who comes across as even more unlikable than Glokta, (Jezal is referred to by more than one character as a pompous ass) though his blundering is often funny, but he is the character who changes the most throughout the series, and I found myself eventually warming up to him.
Logen Ninefingers, or the Bloody-Nine, was my favorite character throughout the series, possibly because he starts off as the simplest and most well-meaning character. Logen seems to ascribe to the principles of the typical fantasy warrior hero: courageous, fierce, honorable, for the most part. He is hideously scarred all over his body from years of experience fighting, but his philosophy of being realistic and doing whatever it takes to survive have allowed him to beat every opponent he has faced. Losing the middle finger from his left hand in a battle earned him his name which is feared throughout his homeland. However, there is a much darker aspect of Logen's personality that haunts him and caused him to wander away from his people aimlessly. One of my favorite quotes from the series without giving anything away comes from the third book when a man is describing The Bloody-Nine to his children. "He'd send you back to the mud. Faster than the [lightning] killed Willum, and with no more regret. Your life hangs on a thread every moment you stand within two strides of that nothing-looking bastard there."
Of these three characters which the First Law Trilogy offers as protagonists, Logen is my personal favorite, though none of them are fit to be called heroes. Most of the minor characters are more easily distinguished as good or evil characters, though a few are even more ambiguous than the main characters. Because so many of the characters do terrible things out of self-perseverance or ignorance as well as to advance their own goals, it is incredibly hard to judge any character as plainly good or evil.
The web of character interaction spreads the moral ambiguity throughout the major and minor characters of the trilogy, causing each character to change the others' situations and attitudes. This only multiplies the reader's difficulty in trying to decide which characters are in the right and which are the real "bad guys." The twisting, character driven plot makes the First Law Trilogy an excellent read that will leave the reader guessing even when they think they know all the answers. When you plunge yourself into this series remember that nothing is as it seems, rules were meant to be broken, and the only thing that matters in war is winning.
