Matt Asks

What do you think of Joe Abercrombie’s world building?

This’ll be something I get into more detail about in the bonus essay, but I can do a short-and-dirty fashion. 

I’m a little iffy on it in the First Law books; there are some interesting elements here and there (Best Served Cold did a great job in making a fantasy Renaissance Italy work, and that’s something I’m favor of), but I’m not a fan of having everything in the world revolve around Bayaz, and a lot of it is kind of meh. Leaving aside Bayaz’ machinations, the Union is rather generic, I’m very tired of the Evil Eastern Empire Gurkhul, and I’m only so-so on the Northmen. And the Red Country’s pseudo-Western got my goat a lot, but that’s largely because I want the Ex-Confederate Protagonist trope to die in a fire. 

I enjoyed his Shattered Sea series a lot better, and it actually made me reconsider Abercrombie as a writer. Whereas I got tired of the miserablism of the First Law books in a hurry, the Shattered Sea series has a good balance between the lows and the highs – Yarvi, Thorn, et al. are recognizably Abercrombian flawed characters, but they’re not complete bastards, indeed the series has quite a few actually lovable characters, and they’re allowed to actually accomplish things.