Not Dead Yet

TITLE: Before They are Hanged
AUTHOR: Joe Abercrombie
PUBLISHER: Pyr

RATING
5/5 “Hang ‘em high”; 4/5 “Just hangin’ out”; 3/5 “Hung jury”; 2/5 “Hung out to dry”; 1/5 “Hangover/Sexual hangups (tie)” DNF “Hanged, drawn & quartered” DISQ “Hung like a horse”
SCORE 4/5

Iconoclasm is fun at first, but it's got a shelf life shorter than a Japanese pop band. Once the glitter rubs off, what once seemed glam feels about as hip as Jefferson Airplane.

"Before They are Hanged" doesn't fall quite so far, but the biting satire is beginning to dull. I confess, I had a whale of a time with Joe Abercrombie’s first book in the series, “The Blade Itself”. Here, Mr Abercrombie cheerfully vivisected some of the ropiest fantasy clichés, from savage barbarians to kindly old wizards. Logen Ninefingers, the barbarian, spent more time screaming in pain than anger. The old wizard proved as kindly as Vlad the Impaler, and the nicest bloke in the whole book turned out to be the torturer.

Mr Abercrombie returns to the bonfire of the inanities in the second book, this time stoking the flames with the concept of heroic journeys and quests, heroes who get through battles without a crease in their woolens, traitors and sieges, heroic romance and famous last words. Nothing is sacred. Again.

The action quickly picks up where “The Blade Itself” left off, with the ramshackle kingdom called the Union facing threats on multiple fronts. The armies of the prophet Khalul, led by a coterie of invincible, cannibalistic Eaters are bearing down on the Union city of Dagoska from the south, while those of the barbarian King Bethod threaten the province of Angland to the north. Inquisitor Glokta arrives in Dagoska to shore up the defenses and unravel the mysterious disappearance of his predecessor.

Bayaz, the First of the Magi and former brother-in-arms to Khalul, journeys in search of a weapon that can stop Khalul’s unnatural underlings. He is joined by a mismatched band of five would-be heroes: Logen, Bayaz’s apprentice, a talkative guide, a dashing swordsman and a feral escaped slave.

A third story arc follows another band of misfits with colorful names like Dogman, as they accompany a Union army heading north, under the dubious leadership of the Union’s vain and cretinous Crown Prince.

We've already been introduced to this identity parade of characters, which leaves Mr Abercrombie more time to expand and enrich his world. We get a little further under the unwashed, flea-bitten skin of Logen and Dogman in particular, and these fatalistic, straightforward yet blackly humorous heroes are easily Mr Abercrombie's best inventions. The backstory to the adventure also contains intriguing hints that all this has gone before--hints that Mr Abercrombie has something to say other than "high fantasy sucks!"

All the same, there’s still plenty of fun to be had in “Before They are Hanged”, watching a string of stale genre staples receive a well-deserved comeuppance. Sword fights become interesting again once you realize Mr Abercrombie is unlikely to let his heroes escape unscathed. Their mask of invulnerability gets its face quite messily mashed in, knocking one hero out but waking the reader up to the possibilities inherent in a story that doesn’t handle its characters with kid gloves. The sex is almost as messy as the fighting, uncomfortably believable, mildly embarrassing and—because hey, it’s not you—sniggeringly funny.

However, all this relentless stereotype-bashing is starting to wear a little thin. There’s now something almost predictable about the character’s inability to dig themselves into anything except more trouble. Some of the catch lines too, such as “Say one thing for Logen Ninefingers, say…”, have outstayed their welcome, and feel shoehorned into the narrative to suit the author’s desire for continuity. Some of Mr Abercrombie’s deconstructions have themselves become stereotypes—the hapless Crown Prince being a classic example. If Mr Abercrombie really wanted to surprise, he’d have the foppish Prince suddenly turn out to be a military genius. Surprise—nepotism works!

It’s always easier to destroy than make something new, and I hope that before the end Mr Abercrombie builds something on the smoking rubble of fantasy conventions he’s created. In any event, after two books in the series I wonder if he’s run out of targets to obliterate. I kind of hope so, otherwise he might be heading back to the remainder bin with all the other glitter boys.