As you can guess from my review of The Blade Itself, I thought the first book of the First Law trilogy was okay. Just okay. I was eager to read the second installment though, since the story held some promise. Sadly, the series took a turn for the worse… This book only fully fueled my smoldering impression of the fact that Abercrombie is a crummy writer.
Before The Are Hanged is filled with unnecessary repetition. Really, it’s filled to the brim with things repeating: characters discussing stuff that is already clear to the reader because it was shown in the narrative 2 pages before that, characters repeating each other’s words in lifeless dialogue, descriptions with 3 times more or less the same adjectives, et cetera, etc., and so forth.
- It’s also filled with clichés. One might call them tropes, sure, sounds fancy, but there’s not enough meat on the bone to say Abercrombie does something interesting with them. On top of that, the language is bland, unimaginative and clichéd as well… E.g. “Never in his life had West seen such an evil-looking man” after which follows a typical description of some brute. As a reader though, I never felt this utter evilness. Or how about this: “The cell beyond was tiny, windowless, the ceiling almost to low to stand. The heat was crushing, the stench appalling.”? Sure, prison cells are probably unavoidable in fantasy, but the part from which these sentences was lifted didn’t convey claustrophobia or fear at all. Just a yawn.
The only interesting character of the first book, the torturer Glokta, sadly doesn’t deliver anymore in this volume. The rendering of his ironical thoughts in a cursive font just becomes a tiresome gimmick. It’s never much more than irony 101. Creepy? Unusual? Morally complicated? Nah. Just a cripple turned cynic with nothing left to lose.
The best thing in this book is the quote by Heinrich Heine in the title pages. (“We should forgive our enemies, but not before they are hanged.”). I didn’t come across any sentence or part of the storyline that lives up to the atmosphere this sets.
I finished about 300 of the 580 pages and I quit. Too much else to read. I won’t be reading Last Argument of Kings. I’m going to read volume two of The Long Price Quartet instead, and be truly uplifted.
originally written on the 4th of March, 2015
Weighing a pig doesn't fatten it. 
I found the reviews 🙂 I see book 2 let you down, no surprise here, but you might still give a chance to the 3rd – or, if not, do try the Heroes, it’s a really entertaining, fast-paced and quite canny book.
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Thanks for the pointer. If my TBR wasn’t that huge already I would, but as is I’ll pass.
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