The Blade Itself

The Blade Itself is the first novel of The First Law trilogy by the British author Joe Abercrombie, published in 2006. It is a fantasy novel told from several points of view, and it introduces a cast whose members are introduced separately before the plot brings them together. The series continues in Before They Are Hanged and Last Argument of Kings.

The Union is in trouble and mostly does not know it yet. Logen Ninefingers is a barbarian warrior who has run out of luck and friends, and who is caught in one feud too many. Sand dan Glokta is a torturer for the Inquisition who was a celebrated swordsman before he was captured and broken, and Jezal dan Luthar is a young officer training for a fencing contest he expects to win.

A wizard gathering what he needs for a job nobody has explained brings all three of them into the same scheme. Bayaz could be the First of the Magi or a fraud with a temper, and he is assembling a set of people whose usefulness is not obvious to them. By the time the group reaches the frozen North, the politics of the Union have caught up with all of them.

The novel is the opening volume of a trilogy rather than a self-contained story, and it spends its length putting the pieces in place. Abercrombie writes each viewpoint with its own idiom, and the book is known for a cast whose members are neither heroic nor entirely unsympathetic.