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I want to tell you about Sand dan Glokta. He is an inquisitor. He tortures people for a living. He is brilliant, cruel, and relentlessly self-aware about both qualities. He has a bad leg, worse teeth, and a habit of describing, in clinical detail, exactly which of his own degraded body parts ache as he limps down whichever corridor he’s limping down.
He is one of the greatest characters in modern fantasy. And he’s introduced in the first fifty pages of The Blade Itself.
What’s It About?
The Blade Itself is the first book in Joe Abercrombie’s First Law trilogy, set in a world that looks like the kind of secondary fantasy world you’ve read a hundred times — until it doesn’t. There are barbarian Northmen. There’s a decadent Union with its scheming nobility and corrupt politicians. There’s magic, and an ancient wizard named Bayaz who shows up claiming to need a band of companions for an important quest.
You’ve heard this before. Except you haven’t, quite.
Abercrombie tells this story through three main POVs:
Logen Ninefingers — a Northman warrior with a reputation for terrifying violence trying, not very successfully, to leave that life behind. He’s warm, funny, philosophical, and genuinely frightening. He might be the most likeable character in the book. This is not entirely reassuring.
Captain Jezal dan Luthar — a young Union officer, vain, privileged, and deeply unimpressive by almost every measure. He’s the character you’d normally expect to be the hero: handsome, good with a sword, from a good family. Abercrombie makes him as irritating as possible and then starts, very slowly, doing something interesting with him.
Sand dan Glokta — as described above. If you’ve never read Abercrombie, Glokta is the character you should read this book for.
What Works
Everything, more or less. The Blade Itself is one of those rare fantasy novels where the world-building, the characters, and the prose all operate at a high level simultaneously. The Union feels like a real empire — corrupt, sprawling, defended by the wrong people. The North feels genuinely cold and brutal. Bayaz is an archetype — the wise old wizard — deployed with knowing subversion that rewards careful reading.
But it’s the characters that make this essential reading. Abercrombie has a gift for moral complexity that doesn’t feel forced. His people don’t do bad things because the plot requires it. They do bad things because of who they are, how they were shaped, and what they need — and that makes all the difference.
The humour is also worth flagging. This is a dark book but it’s frequently very funny. Abercrombie uses black comedy with skill — the jokes land precisely because the darkness around them is genuine.
What to Expect
The Blade Itself is primarily a setup novel. The First Law trilogy is best understood as one long work published in three parts, and this first volume is doing a lot of introducing and positioning. Some readers, expecting an immediately complete story, find that frustrating. If you know going in that this is the foundation rather than the full structure, you’ll enjoy it more.
It ends at a point that is emphatically not a resolution. Before They Are Hanged begins immediately where this leaves off.
Should You Read It?
If you’ve read Joe Abercrombie’s full bibliography and already know you’re in — start here. If you’re wondering whether the grimdark reputation puts you off — it probably shouldn’t. Abercrombie is darker than Tolkien and lighter than the most extreme end of the genre. The brutality is never gratuitous; it’s always in service of character and theme.
One of the best first entries in a fantasy trilogy. Full stop.
Rating: 4.5/5
Rated 4.5 Stars on Amazon. Buy The Blade Itself here.
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- Joe Abercrombie Books in Order
- The Edge of Darkness: 9 Grimdark Fantasy Books for Fans of Gritty Fiction
- The Best of John Gwynne: Gods, Giants, Angels, Malice and Wrath
- 31 Best Fantasy Books You Need To Read Today
Check out Sunset In the East — a mind-bending short story collection from Ben Luxon.
