Glokta. that is the review. that is it

every chapter with Glokta in it is a ten out of ten and every chapter without him is about a seven, and the maths works out at a nine because he is in loads of them.

what he does with the internal voice is amazing, you get the polite thing the man says and then immediately the thing he is actually thinking in italics and it is savage every time. I have never rooted for a torturer before. that is a genuinely uncomfortable place for a book to put you and it does it in about forty pages without ever making a speech about it.

the standard line on Abercrombie is that he is grimdark and cynical and I don't think that's right actually. cynical books are boring because nothing matters. this one is the opposite, everybody wants something enormously and stupidly and then reality happens to them. Jezal is a spoilt idiot and I liked him by the end which felt like being pickpocketed.

Logen is great, the Bloody-Nine stuff is genuinely frightening, and the fight with the Feared later on, well, that's book three, ignore me.

only real complaint is that this first one is very obviously a third of a novel. nothing resolves. they leave on a quest and the book stops. if you are not going to read all three then do not start, you will be annoyed.

Priyesh maintains book three is where it actually becomes good and I maintain he is a man who only likes endings. we have had this argument in a pub, in a car, and twice in a group chat at 1am.