Ever since reading Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings as a teenager, I have loved epic fantasy. The problem is, after reading Lord of the Rings, most of it pales in comparison. Or feels derivative. Or has uninteresting characters.
There are some notable exceptions, of course. George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire series (popularized by the HBO show Game of Thrones, named after the first book) is one. I’m a huge fan of his work, but Martin’s series has some issues of its own. The length is one. The sprawl of the world and the huge number of characters is another. (I have a hunch I’ll need to have the Ice and Fire Wiki handy when I read the next book, years after reading the most recent one). Even Martin has joked he should have written the book about four of five kingdoms instead of seven.
Thankfully, there are other options I have found, including (thanks to the recommendation of a friend) Abercrombie’s The Blade Itself. It feels like Tolkien’s Middle Earth in that there are numerous races competing for dominance, some good and others evil, and yet the book avoids feeling like it’s just some version of Tolkien-lite. There’s an obvious history to this world that we learn about slowly over time, but never feel like we’re getting lost in the minutia. There’s a huge cast of characters whose stories we jump between (including a grizzled warrior, a bitter torturer who is himself a victim of torture, a shallow and overly-entitled cad of a swordsman, and a wizard who claims to be the embodiment of an ancient legend) which is similar to what happens in Martin’s books, but unlike in Westeros, our POV characters occasionally meet and interact, so you don’t need a website or a reference book to keep track of all the story lines.
The book is the first in a trilogy (it is followed by Before They Were Hanged and The Last Argument of Kings). I haven’t read the sequels yet, but I plan to, and am thankful that I can get through the entire story in just three books (as opposed to Martin’s proposed seven, only five of which are currently published). There’s also a stand-alone novel called The Heroes that takes place in the same world and features some of the same colorful characters. There’s also a graphic novel retelling of the story that’s currently being published. I’ll probably have to check that out, too. It’s too interesting of a world and too compelling of a story not to.
ebtower 