Ah, lookee here. Jeff VanderMeer, proper world fantasy award-winning respected author and critic, has posted a list of books that weren’t quite in his ten best books of the year for amazon.com. Guess what, no doubt by some freak accident, got stuck to the bottom?
“The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie – A rough-and-tumble, bold entry to the heroic fantasy ranks that I found both compelling and ragged around the edges at the same time. I waffled back and forth on this, and can’t remember how it didn’t quite make the top ten, but I think it might’ve been published in the UK in 2006.”
Damn that pesky 2006 UK release! When he says ragged round the edges, I’m assuming he’s talking about the textured paper of the cover, of course. SFSignal has also been examining the book:
“In The Blade Itself, Abercrombie shows that humor can go a long way to energizing a story, and putting a human face on characters. We get a little sarcastic humor and some physical humor, all well timed and used to great effect. Also, the fight scenes are exceptionally well done. Abercrombie’s fights are all fast paced, violent and bloody.”
Sticking to the theme of adrenalin-pumping violence, Doug Pirko has passed a comment about The First Law on his livejournal that surely made me smile:
“As sword pr0n it is sans pareil if you like tight, confusing, slipping in the mud, colliding and collapsing into a deadly heap action.”
‘Sword pr0n sans pareil’. That heady juxtaposition of digital-age deliberate misspelling and chivalric french. I absolutely love it. Perhaps the title of my next work …?
