He is a talented writer but a poor author. His dialogue and prose are spot on but his plot is forced through by putting in situations where the characters grow stupid or reckless or they run into unbelievable situations where the events transpire in a totally unrealistic way, even for his abstracted world. There were parts of this book I did like and I don't totally regret the time I invested in reading it but I did spend more time and energy wincing at this faux pas and foibles than I did laughing at the 'humor' or applauding the well done plots. In a world that is supposedly large and expansive, the same characters keep popping up in such a ridiculous way that it is really sad that he can't just come up with more characters rather than constantly pulling the same one's out of the closet. What's not to love? Irritating characters who keep coming back to life when they should have died 3 books ago. For starters...

​@@llywyllngryffyn8053 "run into unbelievable situations where the events transpire in a totally unrealistic way," in my experience real life situations can be much more unbelievable than fictional ones, abercrombie writes one of the realest worlds ive read in terms of people and their motivations and if not write about the extraordinary, then why write at all? i see you use the american spelling of 'humour', i guess that can go some way to explaining why you didnt laugh

@@artemislogic5252 There are a lot of places in the First Law series where I just had to scratch my head wondering how these characters were supposedly acting 'realistic' and it made no sense to me. The story starts off with a bunch of legendary named men, in The North who have survived countless battles and encounters with men and Shanka and after a small skirmish both Logan and the others think the 'other ones' are dea. The group at the camp think Logan died from a fall but there is water in that ravine but no one bothered to check if he made it. Also, Logan assumes his whole party dieed and goes the other way. In the beginning of the book, you you don't know these characters but once you do, that beginning makes no sense. Glokta and Luthar both had similar periods of time where they were the Love them and leave them cads... but neither of them had any by-blow children except when Ardee West and Luthar had a thing but that was 'on the page'. If Luthar had made any bastards, once he became king it would have come to light and once Glokta became the Arch Lektor , same for him. Collum West served alongside Salem Roos for years but later on, when Pike is working with him, he doesn't recognize him... sure, he has burns on his face.. but that doesn't change his height, eyes, voice... Ok, he lost some weight but the rest? another plot contrivance. There are so many... this is just what I can think of when I am tired and its been months since I read the books. Joe Abercrombie is a very talented writer, I enjoy his prose and comedy quite a bit. The structure of his stories and plots are.. less masterful.

None of the things you said make sense. You’re making things up in the book that never happened.

@@miljak9 All the things they mentioned did happen, but I think most of them are pretty fine and plausible. Especially the one about the northmen, as these are books where every battle has the potential to kill you so the fight at the start of the first book is no small matter. The only point I could maybe agree with is West not recognising Rews. But that twist was so awesome to me.

“Apologize to my dice!”

@@johnnygimlet1371 “Apologise to my fahckin’ dice!” he screamed as he split the mans head open with his cleaver. You brought a tear to my eye thinking about this!

I see a lot of people say he's boring and that they skipped his chapters, I can't believe it. I absolutely adored Friendly and really liked his PoV on things, I also thought the writing around Friendly was absolute genius!

This aged well 😊 Can't wait to see it happen!

Wrong and wrong

Which characters did he ruin?

If anything he adds to them in this particular book he makes Shivers and Cosco (minor characters from the original trilogy) into some of his best work

I never got why everyone loves Logan the most.

Masuta No Chosen yep, I loved Glokta

I spent the whole trilogy imagining glokta as an old man because of him always having trouble getting up stairs and stuff

You're fucking crazy, the stand alone books are as good as the main trilogy. The Heroes had some chapters that I didn't care much about, I hated the Finree chapters, except the ones with Bayaz in them, and I really got sick of Gorsts whining, complaining, self pity and self loathing, but other than that it was a wonderful book. Best Served Cold and Red Country were both better than the trilogy in my opinion.

I've had this debate in my head for a while but I'm going to go with Logen. Something about his slow yet wise nature just makes me love him. Glokta is a veeeery close second, though