The Blade Itself is strongly about characters and less about plot. His series is not as full of violence as I expected from the cover, really, and he has an excellent command of establishing compelling characters and writing action. He has an intimate narration style in which he dives into his characters’ thoughts and gives descriptive close-ups in the action, and so creates a sense of “realism”, or at least a full sensory immersion. But good writing is good writing, and Abercrombie still surprised me with a good, solid fantasy novel and some memorable characters.Ībercrombie’s grimdark approach has the kind of grittiness where you can feel the wet dirt and pine needles under your fingernails in cold, muddy forests. Many writers followed down the same path. They have made history already, inspired other writers, and the greyness and grittiness may not be as fresh anymore as they were when these books first came out. I’ve seen these books standing in stores for nearly a decade now – a testament to their ongoing popularity. Scott Bakker and Mark Lawrence to tell tales full of violence and morally grey characters. Inspired perhaps by George RR Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, and joining writers like Steven Erikson, R. Abercrombie was one of the essential voices in establishing the “grimdark” subgenre of epic fantasy that came up in the ‘90s and ‘00s. The first entry in the First Law trilogy, an immensely popular fantasy epic among those who like that sort of thing (I include myself).
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