Before They Are Hanged

Don't you love it when a sequel comes out swinging for the fences? No middle book syndrome, not a single weak chapter, paragraph, or sentence in the whole thing. Before They Are Hanged is everything that I loved from The Blade Itself taken to the next level.

Before They Are Hanged picks up just after the events of Book 1 and wastes no time in catching us up with our protagonists starting with Glokta. Where the last book had many scattered perspectives as our cast was assembled, Before They Are Hanged settles on bouncing between three parties; Glokta in the South, West and Threetree's gang in the North, and our main party of Logen, Ferro, Jezal, and Bayaz in the west.

I don't want to get too specific on plot; each party is accomplishing a unique task and their stories are largely independent. Logen has joined Bayaz on his quest into the Old Empire seeking a forbidden power. West is fighting the Union's war in the North against King Bethod. Most interesting of all, Glokta is now the superior of Dagoska and tasked with rooting out corruption while organizing the city's defenses in advance of a war with the Gurkish. All your favorites from the last book are finally in a position to begin their adventures and boy is it entertaining. As I mentioned with the last book, there isn't anything exceedingly unique as far as the premise goes, what The Fist Law series is really about is injecting nuance and cynicism into traditional tropes. So despite the trite premise, the plot proves to be exceedingly engaging.

As far as the theme goes this book is consistent with The Blade Itself, we've got a focus on the harsh realities of war and violence right at the forefront of it all. There is a persistent thread concerning the settling of scores, of reaping what you've sown, those concepts being echoed between the different storylines in both their narratives and in the prose itself. I think it's needless to say that Joe Abercrombie is a master of character writing and dialogue, but I will say that as a consequence of reading this series a lot of the recall I associate with traditional fantasy has been overwritten with old logan ninefingers and his motley crew. There are catchphrases, I totally forgot to mention that last review; personally I liked them, They fit in great and these books tend to be hilarious when appropriate.

More than anything I think I love the vibe of this series the most. It really benefits from the classic setting and story; it's dark and atmospheric and not always but now and again the story slips into a nostalgic almost a tabletop campaign-y vibe. I think I can safely say that I am hooked and I'll probably read the next series in this larger world/universe. I also can't believe that there hasn't been an adaptation of this yet!? The dialogue is so good that it sometimes feels like I am reading a screenplay for an hour of premier television. We've all wanted more Game of Throne-ish content, here's something that's arguably better!

Disappointed, yet I love this series.

I've been waiting for the real grimdark part of this series for two books now. So far the darkest thing was chopping off of fingers during torture in The Blade Itself. A disembowelment here, chopped off limb there... Sure, it is grimdark but on the low end. Where the hell does the “Lord Grimdark” nickname for Abercrombie come from? I thought this would be brutal. Exhausting. Disgusting in places. Erikson, Cook, Kristoff have more ‘grimdark' stuff in one chapter than Abercrombie has in two books.

Instead it's incredibly entertaining and often funny. Some characters die, but I do feel that most of them have plot armor. I expected to be drained like after finishing a Malazan book. Instead I feel like I read bloodier Sanderson book.

I'd have to re-read ASOIAF but I think Abercrombie does the best character work in fantasy. Along with great prose and writing style full of (often sarcastic) inner monologues it's what elevates these books above the most. He gets into the heads of characters really well. You can easily see why they behave as they do.

I knew this would be 5 star book after three pages. I find his style incredible. It's not something amazing and rarely seen. It's actually the way most writers write, it's just done on whole another level. Glokta, Jezal and Ninefingers grew on me. Especially Glokta's sarcastic comments. Not to mention the character growth some of these went through. Spectacular.

But where's the plot? I already heard that this trilogy is sort of one book split into three but I wasn't expecting to feel it this heavily after two thirds done. There's barely anything happening! And yet it speaks so much more about Abercrombie's writing talent as I'm giving it 5/5 and want to continue. I will take a small break to accommodate other series I'm in the middle of first, though.

The ending was disappointing, I can't believe he wrote it like this. Reminded me of Luke in The Last Jedi when he tosses the lightsaber... nooooot a good thing. Subverting of expectations like this was the worst thing he could've done to end the book on.
But I'm really curious where it goes next... and I shouldn't say ‘it'. Rather they. The characters. The main plot really isn't that much interesting.