Exciting contemporary fantasy with real cutting edge - Rated 
Fantasy is a much maligned genre , yet it has given us a slew of hugely gifted writers. George RR Martin, Robin Hobb, Steven Erikson, Clive Barker, China Mieville to name some of the top of my shiny bonce. There is a new name to add to that list. Joe Abercrombie is a freelance film editor but on the evidence of The Blade Itself he has a new career as a writer . This is terrific stuff.
The best fantasy writers all create wonderful characters( You could argue any good writer has to do this what ever the genre but I feel fantasy for some reason lends itself to vivid but multi-layered characterisations) and this novel has several.
There is the Northern barbarian Logen Nine fingers -"The Bloody Nine"- a prodigious fighter separated from his band of men after yet another battle. He is also possessed of dry intelligence with the wry self awareness to realise that his monumental reputation will bring him nothing but constant strife .
There is Inquisitor Glotka, a former soldier for The Union -which encompasses the land between the inhospitable frozen North and the steamy exotic South who has been left a cripple after spending two years as a guest of the Gurkish , one of the Unions numerous enemies. He is now a torturer for the State , wracked by pain from his physical deformities and constantly undergoing a sardonic internal dialogue .
Then there is the aristocratic Jezal dan Luther , would be fencing champion and the archetypal preening arrogant toff. He treats his fiends with barely concealed disdain and his superior officer the proud grounded Colonel West much the same as he is a commoner and not deserving of his rank ...despite his exceptional war record.
Byaz is the leader of the Magi and is a pompous fulminating presence .He is also an extraordinarily powerful magician and is a witty orator when he has to be .
All of these characters are unalterably drawn together as war approaches the Union on twin fronts. The barbarian hordes are being united by Bethod, a former friend of Logen Ninefingers while in the South the Gurkish hordes are amassing ready to take back some of the territory they lost to the Union. Byaz is talking of dark portents and the end of things.
As this is the first of a trilogy The Blade Itself has to do a lot of scene setting which can be a dull interlude before the real narrative takes hold. Happily and most entertainingly Abercrombie is the type of writer who can really make dialogue fizz ,He also has a highly modernistic irreverent approach to fantasy with lots of profanity , which no doubt will alienate fans of classic fantasy , and plenty of gory action sequences.
As if all this isn't enough there is also a wonderful array of supporting characters including Ferro from the southern state of Diljiin the , a former Gurkish slave girl whose experiences mean she absolutely loathes everybody and has a pathological mistrust of even those trying to help her. There are Ninefingers former compadre,s including Dogface and Threetrees and Quai , Byaz,s geeky apprentice.
At the books conclusion it's all set up splendidly for the next instalment and I was salivating at the prospect of finding where that takes us. While The Blade Itself doesn't have the deep political intrigue of works by Robin Hobb or George RR Martin and indeed doesn't conjure up it's world quite as vividly, for which the lack of a map is a surprising oversight, it's still well written and about as compelling as fiction gets...fantasy or otherwise.
Modern Fantasy Fiction at its Best - Rated
Fantasy trilogies are a difficult thing to pull off. You have to set up the character, introduce a whole new world, make it compelling - all in the shadow of Tolkien's `Lord of the Rings'. With `The Blade Itself' Joe Abercrombie has started what could potentially be a modern fantasy masterpiece. Set in a similar world to Tolkien's, and many other fantasy books, Abercrombie fills it with sentimentalities more attune to our modern world than that of fiction. With a selection of excellent characters we explore the in-depth world that Abercrombie has created never seeing good and evil, but shades of darkest grey.
With only sporadic moments of action and little actual events occurring `The Blade Itself' works as a wonderful introduction. By the end you are friends (or enemies) with several characters and you feel you know their deepest desires. I can not wait to read the next book in the series as it has the potential to move the story and characters onto an even higher level. I recommend this to any fantasy fan - but also to lovers of good fiction.
Sammy recommendation
Fantastic Read - Rated 
I'll keep it brief. I found it a little hard going (slow) to start with, but once the scene setting is done and the story gets going, its a great read - hard to put the book down. Very gory and graphic in parts, also lots of humour througout. Recommended!
Excellent - Rated
I really really liked this book. I found it both humourous and wicked and enjoyed every page of it. Very much in the slant of one of my favourite authors, GRRM and also R Scott Bakker (The Prince of Nothing), I liked this book because it was good fantasy, not so serious that it gets boring but serious enough for the reader to take note, as if it was a set of real events. The twists and turns of the plot were easy enough to follow but not easy enough to fathom and keeps you hooked. I also liked how the major characters weren't too good but nor were they too bas (Glokta was superb, as were his assisstants Frost and Severard, I truly liked but also disliked him at the same time). Great story, great plot. Abercrombie is someone to look out for in the fantasy section for many years to come. I am now reading the second book; Before They Are Hanged.
5/5 stars
Very glad I read the other reviews and ordered this - Rated
I'm coming to the trilogy late, clearly, but I've just finished this first book and ordered the other two immediately. I enjoyed the mix between easy-to-read writing style and multiple plot lines that made me stop and think. The descriptive text is excellent and I had no trouble picturing the barren landscapes and contrasting rich, colourful, vice-ridden cities. I haven't felt the need for a map to anchor the positions of the different countries relative to each other - it's sufficient to have the north or south location and an idea of the climate and culture. The main characters are hard to like as they all have serious flaws - but they are very realistic and the author takes pains to get you to understand how they became as they are.
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