The Blade Itself surprised me. I've put it off because I'm generally not a fan of grimdark, but honestly this first book wasn't really any darker than some of Robin Hobb's books or Mistborn. It's definitely a slow book that is character focused, but Abercrombie does a good job of getting you to care about characters that are flawed. I wouldn't have thought I could like Glockta, but I'm at least invested in his story and he's written very sympathetically in an honest "I'm an evil torturer" kind of way. (Side note: I have very low tolerance for torture scenes, and was relieved that so far most of the torturing has been done off screen or at least not written super graphically.)  There are a few characters I really don't care about, but I think as things start coming together in the next book, likely I will. All in all, I was pleasantly surprised by First Law so far and will be interested to see where Abercrombie is going now that he's set up the main characters.

I listened to the audio narrated by Steven Pacey, and as always, Pacey's narrations are brilliant.