Inquisitor Glokta, a crippled and increasingly bitter relic of the last war, former fencing champion turned torturer extraordinaire, is trapped in a twisted and broken body—not that he allows it to distract him from his daily routine of torturing smugglers.
Nobleman, dashing officer and would-be fencing champion Captain Jezal dan Luthar is living a life of ease by cheating his friends at cards. Vain, shallow, selfish and self-obsessed, the biggest blot on his horizon is having to get out of bed in the morning to train with obsessive and boring old men.
And Logen Ninefingers, an infamous warrior with a bloody past, is about to wake up in a hole in the snow with plans to settle a blood feud with Bethod, the new King of the Northmen, once and for all—ideally by running away from it. But as he's discovering, old habits die really, really hard indeed...
...especially when Bayaz gets involved. A bald old man with a terrible temper and a pathetic assistant, he could be the First of the Magi, he could be a spectacular fraud, but whatever he is, he's about to make the lives of Glotka, Jezal and Logen a whole lot more difficult...
Limited to 150 copies only. The numbered edition is 480 pages printed letterpress two colous on Omnia Natural 120gsm paper by Pat Randle at Nomad Press.
The book is bound in the finest blue leather goatskin and three-pass foil stamping on the cover, spine and back.
The tailbands and ribbon are also unique to this state and the foreedge is coloured blood red with white splashes. This design has been worked up alongside books 2 and 3 to ensure they flow.
As with the standard edition, this book comes will an illustrated endpaper by Tommy Arnold and a further 7 tipped in plates (including a frontispiece) and fold out map.
Housed in a curved mauve cloth slipcase with the blade design foil stamped across all three sides.
This edition is signed by both the author and the artist.
Stopped reading at 13%.
I might give this another shot at some point, but for now, it actually felt kind of… childish? In one chapter, a character described everyone's personalities like this:
“He sat back in his chair and hunched his brawny shoulders with a frown that said, ‘I am big and manly, and have a quick temper, so I should be treated with respect by everyone.’”
[Brint] licked his lips with an expression at once careful and slightly desperate, an expression which seemed to say, ‘I am not young or poor. I can afford to lose this money. I am every bit as important as the rest of you.’"
There were like four or five character descriptions like that. It seemed so… juvenile. It was just a whole bunch of telling me who every character was, what motivated them, etc.
I know I didn't give it much of a chance, so I might give it another shot. Or I might just jump straight to A Little Hatred. I know The Blade Itself was Abercrombie's first book, so it might not necessarily be his strongest. And if I'm honest, A Little Hatred is the one that really interested me; I just picked up this one for the back story.
