Words&Dirt

Summary:

Joe Abercrombie’s Last Argument of Kings is the third and final book in The First Law Trilogy. As the Union’s war in the north continues to rage, Logen Ninefingers is reunited with the Dogman and his other companions, who have joined forces with Collem West. Meanwhile, intrigue in Adua heats up as a new king is crowned and the Gurkish army arrives to claim the city for its shadowy Emperor. Bayaz, Glokta, Jezal, and Ferro all prepare to play their parts in a desperate defense of the Union’s capital. New alliances are formed and others collapse as the trilogy’s epic final battle unfolds.   

Key Concepts and Notes:

• This trilogy contains several strong themes, chief among them the futility of seeking revenge through the perpetuation of violence. The series doesn’t demonstrate how characters can effectively escape vicious cycles of offense-revenge-offense, but it also doesn’t downplay the horrible harms that such cycles produce. There are some great lines about how vengeance is never the sweet release that we imagine it will be. The related theme of recognizing our regrets and asking whether we can start again after committing atrocities is also nicely explored, mainly through Logen’s experiences. The painful disillusionment of learning how the world really works is another solid theme that echoes through the story.
• I came to appreciate the Dogman after thinking he was a dull character for the first two books. The early sections in which he and Logen are together again after a long separation were a delight.
• There were a few clever plot reveals that I didn’t see coming. One in particular made the historical backdrop of the world come to life in a fun and surprising way, mingling myth, magic, and the gritty present.
• A few of the character arcs stood out to me as worthy of note. Jezal’s was probably my favorite, and I also liked how Ferro’s and West’s respective journeys turned out. Wish I could say the same for more characters; they all felt promising in the trilogy’s early pages but most didn’t fulfill their potential.
• Although I personally didn’t enjoy most of the action scenes, I will admit that they are well-executed. Readers who relish complex fight sequences will be amply entertained.
• My final bit of praise is half compliment, half critique. I can’t say I know anything concrete about Abercrombie’s intentions for this series, but it seems to me like he was trying to write an epic fantasy trilogy in which he actively subverts many of the tropes we’ve come to associate with such stories. For example, Bayaz turns out to be a kind of psychopathic anti-Gandalf, which I found sickening but also fascinating. And the ostensible villain, the Gurkish Prophet Khalul, just never shows up to the party; instead he sends his vapid cannibal henchmen to do his bidding. It’s as if The Lord of the Rings ended with the battle of Helm’s Deep, and only Saruman was defeated but Sauron was still at large. If subversion of the “expected fantasy narrative” was on Abercrombie’s agenda, I think he totally nailed it. But the problem, at least for me, is that the final product is really unsatisfying for several reasons, which I’ll try to explain below. To pull off a successful subversion of a genre, you have to convince the reader that your “twisted” version of the genre makes for a better––or at least equally good––story, and I don’t think Abercrombie even came close.
• Ardee said it best: “I’m onto the third and it doesn’t get any easier. Too many damn wizards. I get them mixed up one with another. It’s all battles and endless bloody journeys, here to there and back again” (424). Again, I’m not sure if Abercrombie intended this to be ironic, but whatever the case it’s an accurate description of how I felt reading Last Argument of Kings. The book is action-packed and somehow tremendously boring. Just when you think you’re going to get a breather from all the bloodshed so something interesting can happen, another battle begins. I was worried about this after reading The Blade Itself, but hoped the problem would improve. I was wrong––it got much worse.
• Another glaring flaw is that, on the whole, the characters don’t change much. These books were pitched to me as “character-driven fantasy,” but I don’t think that’s accurate. Character-driven narratives contain character development, and The First Law Trilogy is very light on that. Setting aside the exceptions mentioned above, most of the main characters in this series end the story more or less how they started. They may have learned a few practical lessons or gained a different position in society, but their fundamental moral and behavioral constitutions are the same. The payout of character-driven novels is the feeling that someone has been profoundly transformed by impactful events, but here we just have a lot of impactful events that don’t seem to be transforming anyone.
• All of this is made worse by Abercrombie’s writing. The guy can turn a phrase, certainly, and his descriptive passages aren’t bad, but multiple books in a row revealed how uncreative and repetitive his prose is. Intelligent one-liners that hit home the first time or two became cloying as he rolled them out over and over. By the third book I’d all but stopped reading Glokta’s internal monologues, which always followed the same tiresome cadence and rarely revealed anything novel. Finally, this series contains the absolute worst sex scenes I have ever read. Sex writing isn’t a particular interest of mine so I’m sure there’s worse stuff out there, but I found Abercrombie’s descriptions of sex acts to be awkward at best and repellent by default. Maybe this was another attempt at narrative subversion, or maybe Abercrombie likes grossing people out, or maybe he even thought the sex scenes were erotic. But they were painful to read.
• It would be hard to argue that any reader could finish this series without a vivid sense of the world’s history and the kinds of people who inhabit it. However, the same cannot be said of Abercrombie’s magic system, assuming he even bothered to create one. Apart from hand-wavy statements about pulling power from “the Other Side” and gaining super-human abilities through acts of cannibalism, I never got a clear idea of how Bayaz and the other magic-wielding characters practiced their art. This felt appropriately mysterious at the beginning of the series, but by the end I wanted to know a lot more.
• I’ll wrap this review by stating that I do not think these books are objectively bad. I have occasionally said that about books in the past, but it’s a very high bar to clear. These books are fine, and will even be great for some readers. But for me they were a disappointment.

Favorite Quotes:

It can be a fearsome weapon, patience. One that few men ever learn to use. (69)

That’s what life is. A bunch of errands. If you’re worth a shit you do your best at ‘em. (100)

Now he saw his mistake. He’d made a trap for himself, years ago. He’d made a great heavy chain, link by bloody link, and he’d bound himself up in it. Somehow he’d been offered the chance to get free, a chance he didn’t come near to deserving, but instead he’d blundered back in, and now things were apt to get bloody.

He could feel it coming. A great weight of death, like the shadow of a mountain falling on him. Every time he said a word, or took a step, or had a thought, even, it seemed he’d somehow brought it closer. He drank it down with every swallow, he sucked it in with every breath. He hunched his shoulders up and stared down at his boots, strips of sunlight across the toes…How many things halfway good had he been offered in his life? And now he’d turned one down, and chosen to come back and settle some scores. He licked his teeth, and he spat sour spit out onto the earth. He should have known better. Vengeance is never halfway as simple, or halfway as sweet, as you think it’s going to be. (118)

Proof is boring. Proof is tiresome. Proof is an irrelevance. People would far rather be handed an easy lie than search for a difficult truth, especially if it suits their own purposes. And most of us would far rather have a king with no friends and no enemies, than a king with plenty of both. Most of us would rather have things stay as they are, than risk an uncertain future. (153)

Jezal was beginning to doubt that anyone in a position of high authority ever really knew what they were doing. The best one could hope for was to maintain some shred of an illusion that one might. And occasionally, perhaps, try to give the mindless flood of events the slightest push in one direction or another, hoping desperately that it would turn out to be the right one. (363)

I’m onto the third and it doesn’t get any easier. Too many damn wizards. I get them mixed up one with another. It’s all battles and endless bloody journeys, here to there and back again. (424)

Do you know what’s worse than a villain? A villain who thinks he’s a hero. A man like that, there’s nothing he won’t do, and he’ll always find himself an excuse. (601)

Rating: 3/10