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TShields posted:Yoru Sulfur is Bayaz's assistant. My "First Law" books are on loan to someone, but I was trying to remember if he was a cannibal. Weren't there cannibals? If so, when Bayaz was eating the nameless "meat" in front of Calder at the end.. Specific to that, I may be missing something obvious but I couldn't work out what Yoru's message to Bayaz was in the scene where Bayaz is getting extremely pissy because the lord marshall is going to sue for peace. Sulfur comes up and whispers in Bayaz's ear, and suddenly Bayaz relaxes and says "go for it." What message do you think he passed on? I was looking for strange or unexplained phenomena after that scene, but I never caught it.
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Apr 8, 2011 22:58
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John Charity Spring posted:This is spot-on. The 'archetypical fantasy fight' serves no purpose and achieves nothing, except more death. It doesn't change anything meaningful. It's also (to me) a good subversion of the way those fights happen in fantasy literature: While they're facing off and Gorst even acknowledges the pure climactic intensity of the fight, somebody who you never even see reaches out with a spear and kills the unkillable northman whose name I've forgotten. On the one hand, there's nothing particularly deep or insightful in pointing out that war is random and people die for stupid reasons that have nothing to do with their skill. But I think it's unfair to call that a typical fantasy fight: it's almost the opposite.
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Jun 16, 2011 20:11
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John Charity Spring posted:
There's also the larger arc to consider, though. Everything Abercrombie has put out so far is a piece of the larger story about the dueling magi. Logen has been played up too much in that story arc to not be relevant to its resolution, which means that Abercrombie has to bring him back at some point. I could see a stand-alone book that serves to put him in position to do whatever his role is in the final trilogy. I don't know if he'll do that or not, but it would make narrative sense to me if the next book had a focus on Logen.
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Feb 13, 2012 21:51
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Hughmoris posted:If I remember correctly, they talk about him being dead in Heroes. They never quite come right out and say he's dead, if I remember right - I think it's in the list of Marshals that the corporal has outlasted, and when they get to him they say something like "terrible shame, him being so young." I noticed when I read it that it's heavily implied but never quite stated. Which could go either way - Abercrombie is good about not feeling like he has to spell out every single detail, so it could be that he is dead.
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Feb 22, 2012 21:11
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silly posted:I'm nearing the end of Red Country, will probably finish it tonight. If I had to give my rankings now I would say: Heroes>First Law>Red Country>BSC. Red Country is a good enough read so far, I can't really put my finger on what bugs me about it. My problem with it was that Abercrombie obviously wanted to write a western, and so it felt to me like the plot was there to string together all the iconic western scenes he wanted to write. Some of it felt fairly railroaded to me as a way of shoehorning in a specific thing he wanted to include, and didn't always feel like a natural plot progression like the running (stage)coach battle towards the end - that really felt unnecessary to me, but I also felt the same way about the weird Native American replacement tribes, the violent ungoverned mining town, and the "peaceful townsfolk outsmart the desperados with a trick" gambit. I might like it more on a second read, but on the first read it didn't feel like it had anything particularly novel on it - it read like a greatest tropes of western stories compilation featuring Abercrombie's characters.
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Dec 14, 2012 00:11
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HeroOfTheRevolution posted:Also you're buying into the series as Abercrombie intended. The characters are supposed to come off as archetypes and the story as a classic generic fantasy genre story at first. Yeah - without being irritatingly vague, your synopsis made me snicker a couple of times because the whole first book is setting up fantasy tropes for Abercrombie to gently caress with in the next two, and your interpretation is exactly what he wants you to think. Although he'd probably prefer you to enjoy it more.
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Dec 17, 2012 20:12
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Above Our Own posted:I think he gets worse even between TFL - Red Country. Although it could just be that Abercrombie slowly reveals just how horrible he is as the books go along. I thought the same thing. I'm not sure if not having his POV makes him feel more brutal and vicious, or if he got worse between the books.
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Jan 9, 2013 20:32
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the JJ posted:Soooooo... just got done with the first First Law book. I was, how to put it, unimpressed? I mean, it was fine, but it had been talked up a lot. I was expecting something like a new Glen Cook. Instead I got a better than average but generic as poo poo fantasy novel. I mean, it was way better than inexplicable goon favorite Sanderson, but nothing really stood out and the novel literally ends with 'well, now we've assembled the Fellowship, let's go actually do something.' Only it's less the fellowship and more a literal DnD party. Plus not Orcs, not Wildlings, not Sauron, not Gandalf, not Molly, not Conan etc. etc. etc. You're getting out of it exactly what Abercrombie wants you to, but it's because he wrote the First Law trilogy specifically as a way of criticizing and playing with standard fantasy tropes but did it subtly enough that it takes most of the trilogy before you realize what he's doing. The first book is almost completely standard modern fantasy, but in doing it that way he's leading you down a garden path - he's setting up archetypes that you'll be basing a lot of your interpretations of the characters' behavior on so that when he gives you the series of big reveals, you can go back and see all the clues he built in. Avoid spoilers, keep reading, but expect the payoff to wait until the last book.
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Jun 17, 2014 19:23
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UncleMonkey posted:I love Monza and I really hope we see her again in future books. Joe has to have her make another appearance at some point. Before Red Country fans were always asking if we'd see Logen again. I have to think Monza is a requested character too. Especially where her story ended in BSC. Seems rather important. I have a strong suspicion that Abercrombie has an overall story outlined in his head, and each book is moving characters around to get them where they need to be for the final culmination of the story. I'd be shocked if Monza isn't a key part of the denouement of the story the whole collection tells: her insistence on independence from Bayaz and Khalul makes her the only real potential power in the world to-date that hasn't been painted as an irredeemable evil.
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Oct 31, 2014 00:12
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I just reread through the books in series, and one thing that stuck out to me in doing that was Javre. No spoiler tags because none of this seems spoilery to me, but be warned. The Templars of Hoskeep have the only magic weapons we've seen in the world, and the only magical items you see in the series that i can recall with the exception of a magical McGuffin that is never really dwelt on in one of the Sharp Ends stories. That seems significant to me even though the Javre & Shev series of stories is mostly a comic take on Fafhred & the Grey Mouser. I can't figure out if Abercrombie included all the magic swords because that's he genre he was working in, or if he intentionally is suggesting that there's a lot more magic out in the world than the really limited witches & magi that show up in the main series. If so, there are potentially a lot of new directions the new trilogy could go in terms of upsetting the geopolitics we've seen so far.
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May 22, 2018 18:29
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Tofu Injection posted:I doubt they're the Maker's. He didn't like flashy things. He liked things that worked. That was my take - all his swords are specifically described as unornamented but marked with his mark, while the Templar's swords are extremely flashy and there's no mark on them mentioned. We know there are other magicians out in the world, like Caurib the witch from the original trilogy, but they're never really central or even particularly important in the other stories. It makes me wonder whether that's a bias of the original Magi and there's actually a lot more happening than they realize, or if all the other magicians and witches are just leagues behind the Magi.
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May 29, 2018 18:29
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Filthy Monkey posted:I do still feel like the motivation behind Logen and Ferro following Bayaz is a bit flimsy. Maybe he has some sort of magus mind control and they are his puppets. I also dislike the navigator, as he feels more like a single trait turned into a one-dimensional character. If I were to give out a 'worst character in the book' award, it would go to him. IMO the first trilogy suffers a bit from Abercrombie clearly wanting to do his own take on the classic "a group of adventurers go adventuring" style of fantasy, with the result that he kind of shoehorns tropes into the plot. His other books similarly follow a convention, but he's much better at coming up with more natural plot that fits the convention (with the possible exception of Red Country where some of the Western tropes felt kind of jammed onto the core plot to me).
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Aug 27, 2019 22:33
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ZombieLenin posted:I mean, there literally is not a single character in the series who is not morally compromised in some way. I'd argue that he's a defensible character until Red Country, where he's presented as truly irredeemable - probably because as somebody said up-thread it's the first time that you see him through the eyes of the people he exploits instead of the people he tries to ingratiate himself to. Edit: and in particular, I think the thing that makes him irredeemable in that book is that he he has the power to prevent the atrocities his men cause, but he presents himself as a helpless onlooker with no power. He's one of the few characters who doesn't either try to prevent the evil he causes or embrace it wholeheartedly - he rejects the idea that he has any agency even when he self-evidently does, and as a result pretends that he's blameless in the face of atrocity. I think that makes him particularly despicable, arguably even more than a Pike or Glotka who knows that what they're doing is evil but acknowledge that they choose to do it. Notahippie fucked around with this message at 23:29 on Oct 23, 2019 |
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Oct 23, 2019 23:26
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Xenix posted:It's never said, but the thought that it may be Bayaz crossed my mind as well. In one of her fits, Rikke sees a bald weaver with a bottomless purse. Sure sounds like one First of the Magi everyone knows. I feel like there's two options: One is that it's Bayaz, which means he's done with feudalism and capitalism as tools for social control and sees more potential in some kind of communism (probably closer to Stalin than Kropotkin). In this case, Sulfer is setting up the Union to go full accelerationist through atrocities spurring greater rebellion. The argument against this is that Valint & Balk currently completely run the Union and there's no reason to think that there are any cracks in their control - basically they've never had any major setback that we see that would undermine their control. The other option is that it's another player who is directly attacking the capitalist system that Bayaz is using for control as a way of outmaneuvering him. IMO this option is more likely, because if you were an opponent of Bayaz it's one of the only plays you have available to you - otherwise you could topple the Union but still end up with him in control if you didn't change the underlying system. The question is who would be behind it, though, and to me that's most likely the eater from Best Served Cold. He's both a formal opponent of Bayaz's and also somebody who has demonstrated that he's aware of the political currents in the world and willing to use them to block Bayaz's goals.
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Nov 13, 2019 23:16
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Ccs posted:I think it's purposefully ambiguous but also not a step he'd take due to its inconvenience. I agree - I think that Abercrombie is deliberately leaving it open, but I also think that Bayaz is presented as a chessmaster whose power doesn't come from his magic or his physical powers. He's a stand-in for capital... his power comes from the fact that if you cross him he'll have you bankrupt, evicted, and arrested by the inquisition within a week. As an eater he's too personal of a threat, and that takes away some of the horror of him as this amorphous cloud of political power. To me he's "you can't fight city hall" in person.
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Jul 14, 2020 17:00
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Something I noticed in The Trouble with Peace: there's a theme across several of the more antagonisty characters of red hair Seleste, the Judge, Shylo, and the Styrian spy who is clearly Shylo's kid all have red hair. Seleste might be wearing wig, since that's the style, but since she also name-drops being locked in the house of the maker I tend to think she's more important than she lays on. As for the others, I don't know what to make of it - I don't know if the Judge is actually Shylo, or if they're all her/Cas's kids, or if it's spurious, or what.
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Oct 6, 2020 21:54
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Yorkshire Pudding posted:I don’t think he gained the name “Steepfield” until after the events of the original trilogy. He held a shield at the Fenris/Logan duel, and since that was 30 years ago and he’s maybe in his 50s now he had to be young. In The Heroes he obviously wasn’t much of a name because one of the themes is “most of the old heroes are dead” and it would be surprising if someone like Craw wouldn’t know him, and he wouldn’t have been mentioned or rounded up by Black Dow to either fight or be killed. There's a line in TTWP where somebody says "Steepfield? *He* was the guy who held the pass in the High Places?" or something like that - I figured that was his naming battle, and it was something that happened totally offscreen since I can't recall any battles it would fit with.
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Oct 14, 2020 19:08
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His Divine Shadow posted:True, I imagine them as ugly greasy bastards with long stringy hair. Not a single one is pleasant to look at in my head except maybe Shivers before his... ordeal.. Maybe Glama Golden? Wasn't his thing in part being handsome?
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Nov 24, 2020 20:01
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