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Before They Are Hanged: Book Two of The First
Law
by Joe Abercrombie
(Gollancz, £9.99, 441 pages, trade paperback, published 15 March
2007.)
Review by Simeon Shoul
 Here's
a book in which everyone has problems.
Sand dan Glokta, ex-Colonel of Cavalry, now a professional torturer
in the office of the inquisition, has been given command of the city
of Dagoska. His problems? Well his predecessor vanished without trace,
the city is about to be besieged by the forces of Uthman the Merciless,
Emperor of Gurkhul, it's riddled with traitors and the best soldier
on his side is a mercenary with a reputation for selling his employers
out the instant he gets a better offer.
Jezal dan Luthar, Captain in The King's Own Cavalry, has been ordered
to accompany Bayaz, First of the Magi, on a lengthy and apparently pointless
quest into the distant west. His problems? An assortment of companions
he loathes, a trek through the lawless, dog-eat-dog wilds of the Old
Empire, the loss of his chance for glory with his regiment (gone north
to fight the forces of Bethod, King of the Northmen), and also the fact
that, professional soldier or not, Jezal has never lifted a hand in
anger in his life, and it's begun to look very much like he's going
to have to. Soon.
Collem West, Jezal's old commander, recently promoted to Colonel on
Marshal Burr's staff, is stuck right in the middle of that glorious
campaign Jezal so longs to be a part of. His problems? He's a lowborn
commoner, risen to rank on the basis of merit, and despised by the well-born
aristocrats of the officer corps. The army is riddled with incompetents,
factions, professional rivalries, and loaded down with levies of unfit,
untrained, ill-armed gutter scrapings. Worst of all, West is saddled
with nurse-maiding Crown Prince Ladisla, who is intent on military glory
and incapable of organising an orgy in a brothel.
Logen Ninefingers, who occasionally metamorphs into the blood-crazed
berserker known in the North as The Bloody Nine, is also accompanying
Bayaz, and Jezal, into the west. His problems? Well he has to forge
some kind of unity between his varied companions, particularly Ferro,
the vicious half-demon huntress from the south, and Jezal, the dandyish
play-soldier. He also has to keep The Bloody Nine at bay, as the last
thing he wants is to wake up and find he has killed off all his companions
and (he hopes) friends. Last of all there's the puzzle of finding out
just what it is they're traipsing off into the west with Bayaz to find,
and why it is that everyone they meet who seems in the know regards
it as a really, really, really bad idea...
Bayaz, of course, has problems of his own, such as the hundreds of
sorcerous cannibals who are marching with the armies of Uthman against
the Union (which Bayaz founded, hundreds of years before), and the fact
that puissant magician though he is you don't use magic without paying
a price, and sometimes a very grim one.
This is a brisk tale and well-told. Abercrombie keeps the action snapping
to and fro from one area to another, so that you're never kept in suspense
about what is happening with any group of protagonists too long. There
is, perhaps, a bit less humour here than in the first volume in the
sequence (The Blade Itself), and what there is is very dark,
but also effective. The real strength of the book however is in its
characters. These are some of the most cynical people ever to appear
in fantasy-fiction, and they spend a great deal of time striking sparks
off each other with their doubts and skepticism, to great narrative
effect. Abercrombie is doing good work with this story, and I'm looking
forward to the next instalment.
Elsewhere in infinity plus:
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