The First Law Book One:The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie

Logen Ninefingers is a Barbarian in trouble. Trapped by the Shanka on the side of the mountain, it's not clear if he'll get out of trouble this time. Logen is famous, or rather, infamous, for his exploits in the North, having left a trail of blood and dead bodies behind him since he was a young man. But now he's getting older and some of those dead bodies include his wife and their children, and he's increasingly uncertain that this is how he wants to spend the rest of his life, however long that lasts.

He manages to escape, leaving his men behind when they are separated by the Shanka, and makes his way south, where he is contacted by a student of Bayaz, the First Mage. Bayaz has need of Logen, and asks the Barbarian to travel with his student to his academy, where he will explain more. Logen agrees, having nothing left to lose, and must save the student when the other man falls sick after having lost the supplies and mounts that were supposed to get them to the Academy faster.

Sand den Glokta used to be a celebrated soldier, until he was captured by the Enemy Gurkish and brutally tortured. He came back less than a man, teeth broken in half, wracked by pain and missing toes. Now he's employed as an Inquisitor, wringing corruption out of the Empire one confession at a time. All his friends abandoned him after his return, and so he has no friends, just a steady succession of work. But even his work is being co-opted by his superiors to the outcomes that they want.

When Bayaz shows up in the city to take up the post of First Magi in the Closed Council that actually runs the Empire with the Emperor sick and dying, his superiors assign Glokta to pierce through the deception and show Bayaz to be nothing more than a charlatan pretending to be the great Bayaz, who could not be alive after all this time. Glokta has his suspicions, but none of his investigations can prove anything one way or another... until Bayaz sets them all to rest by opening the building previously thought unopenable: The House of the Maker, the mage who set the Empire in motion, of whom Bayaz was a student.

Ferro Maljinn is a former slave fighting against the Gurkish, the same people who tortured Glokta. The Gurkish took her from her home and enslaved her, and now she has won her way free and takes her vengeance on the Gurkish people. But they are making an effort to catch her, sending Eaters out after her with orders to bring her back to the Gurkish capitol and put her in a cage in which she will eventually die. But this plan is foiled by a Magi named Yulwei, who hides her and brings her north to the City of the Empire to meet Bayaz, who needs her help for a mission against the Gurkish and the Northern Barbarians. But can she give up her little vengeances for a bigger one?

Captain Jezal dan Luthar is the hard-drinking, hard-wenching, poker-playing guardsman with ambitions of winning the Union fencing contest. But to do so he will have to give up all his favorite pasttimes to do so. His fellow guardsman, Collum West, is a Hard-working commoner that the noble-born Jezal scorns... until he meets West's sister, Ardee, a bored woman who likes to stir up trouble. For her, Jezal will train hard and win the contest, if he can. But does Ardee truly love him, or is she just out to make more trouble by leading on a young nobleman? And what will Collem West to do her when he finds out she has been dabbling with Jezal?

The Union is heading to war with the Gurkish and the Northern Barbarians. The Barbarians have the Shanka behind them, and the Gurkish are allied with the Eaters of Human Flesh. Can the Union survive, or will it go down in a rain of blood, overextended in a war on two fronts at once? And what does Bayaz have in mind to save the Union his master helped found?

This was a hard book to read, because none of the characters are really noble. I suppose you might call it realistic, but all of the characters do things for selfish reasons, and none of them seem to believe in human nobility. Then again, given how the characters around them act and behave, I suppose it's only fair, because nobody acts out of nobility. The closest anyone comes is Bayaz, and we don't get to see much of his motivation, so it's unclear if he *is* being noble and concerned for others, or if he's just offended that anyone would try to destroy the nation that his former mentor began.

Given that this is fantasy, it's a decidedly gothic, post-modern type of fantasy, and reading it is less transporting than it is a slog through characters who don't care unless you shove some kind of payment under their face or wave a self-aggrandizing reason for them to do something. There's no nobility in this world, no kindness, and nothing uplifting to fight for. The best you can do is slog on, and if you're alive at the end of the day, count yourself lucky.

I found it distasteful to read and hard to read, in that none of the characters made me want to stand up and root for them to succeed. I guess Logen Ninefingers came the closest, as he never made any pretensions to be noble or concerned for others. But I haven't exactly been inspired to pick up the rest of the series from this volume. Fans of traditional fantasy won't like it one bit, and while the writing is good and the scenes are evocative and well-described, none of the characters appealed to me or made me care about them in any way. This one won't ever be on my list of favorite books.