Sharp-Edged Wit

TITLE: The Blade Itself
AUTHOR: Joe Abercrombie
PUBLISHER: Pyr

RATING
5/5 "Go ahead, make my day."; 4/5 "You talking to me?"; 3/5 "Say "hello" to my little friend!"; 2/5 "Yo, Adrian!"; 1/5 "You maniacs! You blew it up! Oh damn you! Goddamn you all the Hell!"
SCORE 5/5

Logen Ninefingers is the toughest, baddest fighter in all of the North, the kind of stone-cold killer who could eat Chuck Norris and Sylvester Stallone for breakfast, and still have room for Arnold Schwarzenegger for desert. When we first meet him, he's doing what he does best: killing things. Of course, like all action heroes, he cracks wise as he breaks heads; his first lines are, "Shit", followed by "Gah!", "Hah", "Shit" yet again, then "Aaargh!". Ah, such poetry. He whimpers, grunts, squeals, then falls off a cliff.

He what?

Yes, the heroes of "The Blade Itself", by British author Joe Abercrombie, are not what you expect. It's as though Mr Abercrombie has taken well-worn archetypes of fantasy and swords & sorcery, the Tough Barbarian, the Wise Wizard, the Young Gallant, the Cynical Veteran, the Damsel in Distress, placed them lovingly on a pedestal, bowed deeply before them, then cut their throats, ripped out their entrails and set them on fire. Rarely have such genre clichés been deconstructed with such élan and obvious glee.

Gritty, dark fantasy seems to have enjoyed a surge in popularity over the past decade, boosted by authors such as George R R Martin, Stevan Erikson and Scott Bakker. Their heroes are anything but heroic, sometimes die, and frequently swear. Of course, there's an inherent contradiction in trying to write a "realistic" fantasy, and all too often such stories become a race to the lowest, pimpley-est of adolescent common denominators, stuffed with blood, gore, swearing and sex. Mr Bakker's "Prince of Nothing" series springs to mind as a particular culprit. "The Blade Itself" neatly avoids these pitfalls. The charm of Mr Abercrombie's work is that he manages to wallow in the mud without getting dirty. He remembers fantasy is, above all, supposed to be fun.

Mr Abercrombie has a rare talent for sketching vivid personalities in just a few strokes. His characters may be more memorable than believable, but always sympathetic. Take Logen, for starters. You'll never have such a soft spot for such a hard lump of a man. He's lost his family, his friends and his axe – now all he has for company is a cooking pot. Mr Abercrombie deftly portrays him as a worn nub of a man, tired from years of fighting, who could still snap you in two if he had a mind to.

His fall from the cliff is not the end, and eventually he falls in with Bayaz, a man who claims to be the First of the Magi. Unlike most Wise Wizards, he's not much of a one for fireside wisdom and heartwarming homilies. Waving magic wands and speaking pig-Latin doesn't appear on his "To Do" list, either. The Darth Vader neck-crushing thing is more Bayaz's speed, when he's not making people spontaneously explode, like Tetsuo in "Akira".

Bayaz brings Logen to the city of Adua, the capital of a massive but decrepit, patchwork kingdom called the Union. There, they cross paths with Jezal dan Luthar, a dashing and dishy young swordsman callow to the point of almost mental incapacity, and Inquisitor Glokta, a torturer with unique insights into his job thanks to two years spent in the dungeons of the Union's enemies. He walks with a limp, climbs stairs with reluctance, is missing half his teeth but none of his wits. You feel sorry for him, when he's not cutting people's fingers off.

There are plenty of fingers in line for the chop, as the Union is beset by enemies within and without, real as well as imagined. People claiming to be powerful wizards go right to the top of the inquisition's Suspicious People list, and Glokta is put on the case of finding out whether the old man really is who he claims to be. In this, he's aided by two thuggish helpers, an ex-criminal and a giant, near-mute albino, who naturally gets one of the novel's best lines.

There also are a number of minor stories, each packed with equally quirky characters. The requisite Damsel in Distress is Ferro Maljinn, an escaped slave and, incidentally, a feral, evil spirit of a woman, madder than a pit bull on acid. When offered salvation, her first instinct is to stab her rescuer. Other interwoven lines follow dour Major West and his hard-drinking sister, and a band of northern outlaws with colorful names like Dogman and Threetrees.

As the first book of a trilogy, much of "The Blade Itself" is spent on stage-setting and world-building. You get the sense of forces gathering, like mountaineers under a snow shelf after someone says, "Atchoo". The aims and motives of the protagonists remain mostly shrouded, and the overarching mythology is revealed in teasingly brief glimpses. The action is therefore episodic rather than epic. Some readers may be put off by the slow plot development, but although small-scale, the fights are never less than electric in intensity. It all builds nicely to a climactic, crimson scene where we learn why Logen Ninefingers is also known as "The Bloody-Nine."

"The Blade Itself" is stripped-down fantasy, anarchic and endless fun to read, Monty Python does Conan the Barbarian, with Jason Bourne in the lead. It is not an Important Book, it won't change your life, just give you a few hours of genuine pleasure. You'll whimper, grunt, and perhaps even squeal with laughter. Then you'll go and buy the next book in the series.