Before They are Hanged by Joe Abercrombie is the second in The First Law trilogy. The first novel I bought on a whim at a bookstore in Oxford while I studied there. I knew some of my favorite authors recommended it (and a good friend) and I thought the cover was pretty (it was shiny!) and I wanted a British fantasy author to buy before I went back to America. The first book was entertaining enough so I needed to read the rest.
As I started reading the book my thoughts were: interesting characters, interesting development, very dark, but nothing extremely innovative or creative to me. I noted the repeated use of certain descriptors and I thought that this was indicative of lazy writing, but the more I thought about it the more I realized that this was a clever tactic to get us into the heads of the characters. Glokta’s italicized thoughts to himself show us his isolation, his conflict, the only person he can talk to is himself. Dogman’s use of dialect and vernacular shows us his difference between the Union citizens, how he stands apart form them. Jezal’s prose is the most “traditional” because he is a nobleman raised in the way we would expect someone to write. But when we read Ferro’s story we find her very style of speaking to be abrasive, enforcing the idea of her own abrasiveness.
Abercrombie offers us a chance to have a conversation about voice, style, and form. There is something much deeper to the characterization in these books than just another fantasy novel. Abercrombie’s strength rests in his ability to create deeply character driven novels. The language of the narrative itself informs and shapes the characters. It is an amazing gift and talent. For me, nothing makes a novel more compelling than good characterization. The way Abercrombie can use the exact voice of his characters as the narrator is absolutely brilliant. Other writers try to do this, but so few actually succeed so well. My reading experience was one of submersion into the minds of these characters and each experience was realized fully.
His books are a beautiful thing, although very dark. The darkness in some ways was only able to be communicated by being so deep in the character’s minds that things that were truly able to as devastating as they were. Yes, the actions were not nice, especially involving Glokta, but the things that were so horrible and dark were made all the more traumatic because the reader is so deeply embedded into the character’s mind, every single hurt because the character and you morph together. It is a beautiful and truly authentic reading experience.