#logen is SO different (and better) in red country

[xserpx]

Finished The Blade Itself, and probably enjoyed it more this time around than I ever have. I've always hated him but Sult is actually a pretty great chessmaster type who seems to grasp more of the bigger picture than Glokta, at least at the start. I still think Pacey's voice for him makes him sound too silly, but if you look past that he's not nearly so fuddy-duddy. I look forward to returning to him in LAOK.

Jezal and Ardee are spectacular as always. I'll never not love the way Jezal ends up being the one swept off his feet.

This book has a lot of fantastic monologues ("I've fought in three campaigns", Forley's farewell, plus Jezal's chin which technically isn't a monologue but does live rent-free in my brain), and Ardee's is truly up there with the very best.

I really liked the description of the House of the Maker. Usually I don't give a shit because world-building meh, but paying attention to it more this time I think Joe captures the uncanny quality really well. It has a Midjourney-style impossibility to it, as well as that nauseating hyper detail. The bit where Glokta notices that they didn't go up any stairs is great, and I like how it kinda bonds Glokta & Jezal through their shared experience of something impossible to describe to anyone else.

In other news, the Bloody-Nine is fantastic. This isn't actually news. I did like how Vitari & Ferro were his main opponents and how it showed how hardcore they both are to even be able to face the B9 and survive.

And speaking of Ferro, she is so freaking great. I love how she's a comic relief character and also a horrible stray cat that wandered in, hissing at people, insulting them, no care for comfort or hygiene. To be that funny and prickly while also yearning make connections deep down, she is so good ❤️🥺.

And the freaking foreshadowing is so audacious.

10 seconds after meeting Jezal's father this happens:

‘We will talk later.’ [Bayaz] said it with a disturbing finality, as if it were a thing already arranged. Then he turned away and vanished smoothly into the crowds. Jezal’s father stared after him, ashen-faced now, as though he had seen a ghost.

‘Do you know him, father?’

‘I ...’

Then an interruption happens and that moment (and Jezal's father generally) is entirely forgotten about.

Also this:

High Justice Marovia, Glokta noticed, looked to be thoroughly enjoying himself. Almost as if he knows something we don’t.

Say one thing for the foreshadowing, say it isn't subtle!

Very good all round. Though I have now started BTAH and that first West chapter is so boring, especially compared to the similar first Gorst chapter in TH, which is also an exposition-heavy discussion of battle tactics amongst people we're not sure if we need to care about yet but Gorst's chapter still manages to have some decent character moments. My theory is that Ferro, Dogman & West are all at their best in TBI, whilst Glokta rules supreme in BTAH, and Jezal & Logen are what makes LAOK my favourite overall.

[xserpx]

#joe abercrombie#for a nominally cishet author...#honestly abercrombie's take on queerness is refreshing in a few aspects#having its flaws? of course nothing's perfect#but multiple queer characters with different relationships to their queerness?#showing off how toxic adhering to heteronormative culture is?#showing off the romantic element of queerness?#but also being very upfront and explicit that some of them are banging and enjoy it?#leo dan brock is easily one of two best fantasy queer protagonists in the last decade#and it's barely a contest past the other one leo is leaving so many in the dirt#i mean the age of madness is still great outside of leo's queerness but it's so much better for it

For sure. I'm still floored by the fact I wasn't expecting it at all. No one reads these books for the gay rep. It's pretty tried and true grimdark fantasy, catering to "guys in furs" as Abercrombie calls them. You like squelch? You like swear words? Have a fucking bucket load. Like, the fact that Abercrombie tries when it comes to women is encouraging, his books definitely have a left-leaning self-awareness and some interesting genderqueer overtones, but after his (pretty meh) attempt at writing lesbians in Sharp Ends, Joe Abercrombie wasn't at all on my radar as an author I'd care about for canon queer rep. I've been a fan of his for 10 years, I love everything he's written, I don't need to know anything about a book that's got his name on. And I don't even think AoM is the best thing he's ever done (though I think Leo probably is???). I also still hesitate to recommend the Age of Madness on the basis of its representation, because it's really only one tiny facet of a story that is mostly fantasy French Revolution by way of the Hollow Crown, with 7 main POVs. For some reason, I just feel like there is a certain level of queerness a thing needs to have in order to be recommended as queer media. Idk. You could take the queerness out, and Leo would still be an incredibly strong character. You still have Orso, Savine, Vick, Rikke, Clover and Broad. I can't even list all my old favourites who are still present in the new trilogy, or the new non-POV characters I love (including Jappo!). AoM would still be fantastic without Leo. Heck, it would still have gay rep without Leo.

But Leo is a whole other kettle of fish IMO. Because Abercrombie is a master of character writing, and Leo is the best character he's ever written. You could easily argue Leo is 'bad' representation by some standards - he's a terrible person, he's homophobic, he never says he's gay, there isn't enough gay sex, there's no kiss. I definitely have my genuine gripes too; it's not perfect, as you say. In most of the interviews I've seen Abercrombie seems to suggest making him queer was more or less an afterthought rather than something he intended from the start (I find that so hard to believe, but OK). I want to say being gay is like the fifth most important thing about Leo. It's just one facet of him, and Leo is just one facet of the trilogy, but having said that, every facet is important. Every little piece informs the whole.

I think that multi-faceted approach to character is what makes Abercrombie's later characters so good, and also kind of explains why many people in the wider culture are getting sick of representation-focused stories. Characters shouldn't be "just" one thing. Think about The First Law trilogy: Glokta's disability was the quintessential defining feature of his character - and what a fantastic character, still! - but now what gave Glokta his edge is just one aspect of Leo. While he definitely draws on Glokta's history to give him that delicious broth-like depth of flavour, IMO it also highlights the limits of representation for its own sake: you can't have a character like Leo if all you're aiming for is Glokta. It would be so easy for Abercrombie to do that. Glokta is way more popular than Leo. Logen was beloved even before Red Country made him a much more challenging figure. Instead, Abercrombie delivered a character so dynamic, complex, and thematically resonant, that it's genuinely hard to even think of an equal. So while I hesitate to recommend AoM as LGBT rep on the basis that it's 'just' one tiny part, I also think that maybe having it be a tiny part is what makes it so damn impressive.

basically my standards for gay/trans media these days are that it has to be something i'd still enjoy even if none of the characters were gay or trans. bc otherwise the whole thing is a waste of my fucking time. in 2012 i was so starved for gay representation that i'd consume anything that so much as mentioned queerness just to feel less alone but that's not the world we live in anymore and i don't want to go back to that world and i would be miserable continuing to pretend that gayness is the pinnacle of good writing in 2023 it feels so.... gross. i like being spoiled with a rapturous amount of gay content to choose from and plenty of the gay content i DON'T like is beloved by other queer people and i don't have to love every gay narrative or pretend to. so i'm no longer touching any shit that doesn't do the kind of cool storytelling that compels me. i did my years in the trenches.

[beeblackburn]

There’s an interview where Abercrombie details who he’s read about here: https://locusmag.com/2020/01/joe-abercrombie-age-of-madness/

I’ll just excerpt the necessary parts:

“There’s a writer you may not have heard of, called J.R.R. Tolkien. Almost unknown, these days. As with everyone, I���m sure, I started with The Hobbit and was gripped by that. By the age of ten or so I was very into The Lord of the Rings, and I would read it every year around Christmastime. Tolkien was always just there – looming, whether you read fantasy or not. It was the big thing. He bestrode the genre like a colossus. I started looking for other things and came upon A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin, and found that magical and fascinating because it was such a different approach to Tolkien. Then I started reading a lot of Michael Moorcock, Elric, and obviously saw a very different kind of approach to morality in those books, much more of a sword-and-sorcery kind of ethos. Those three were the foundational fantasy writers for me.

“Then I started to read a lot of stuff like David Eddings and Dragonlance, that sort of commercial fantasy in the ’80s and ’90s, and just would tear through heaps of those books and loved them. I started to feel they were plowing the same furrow over and over and becoming a bit predictable. I started reading much more widely – thriller writers, guys like Elmore Leonard and James Ellroy – and I was fascinated by that rough, noir, tough kind of voice. It was very different to the sort of prose I’d seen in fantasy. They’re about the hook, and being in the character’s head. That really close association with their thoughts is unlike Tolkien, who has quite a distance in his narration. He’s above the events, and sees what he needs to see, but you’re not often in Aragorn’s thoughts – whereas a writer like James Ellroy is all about the personal experience of a limited cast. I was fascinated by the contrast between that approach to visceral thriller writing and the more dignified, standoffish approach I saw in fantasy, and from an early age I wondered if you could knit those two together. I wasn’t quite getting the fantasy I would have liked to see. Then I read A Game of Thrones in the ’90s, and that was exactly that thing.

So, he clearly holds GRRM as an inspiration, and while there are superficial comparisons to be made (though, Age of Madness makes the Caul Shivers and Sandor Clegane comparison more pointed with the inclusion of a certain character), Monza Murcatto also has a bit of literary DNA with Jaime in terms of being a brilliant, handsome, disabled-down-the-road warrior who has an incestuous relationship. 

Ultimately, they’re more remixes and reactions to his prior characters: Shivers as the anti-Logen Ninefingers and Monza as the refinement of the first woman of vengeance that was Ferro Maljinn.

Also, to the anon, Brienne of Tarth and Bremer dan Gorst as dark mirrors? I don’t see it. Brienne is a dumped-upon idealist of a knight with insecurities about her gender and how she fits in her world. Gorst is toxic masculinity to a tee, complete with loving violence, an insecurity complex he fills through slaughter, and incelhood, given his very gross and possessive thoughts on Finree dan Brock. They’re very night and day.

I personally have some thoughts on the idea of Abercrombie and GRRM being realistic, and I actually do swing on the idea that Abercrombie is more realistic than GRRM’s theatrics, given Abercrombie’s more worksmanlike definition of evil and the cruelties done in the Name of the System. 

Though, with all due respect, I’d say defining Abercrombie as pure grimdark misses what makes Red Country (and Age of Madness, but that’s another story) so great in context: no one’s better for being evil, Shy and Temple are necessary lens for critiquing the violence of the first trilogy (and people who refuse to accept the inevitable grind of being like the past, even if it took awhile in Temple’s case) and Abercrombie lets Temple have his happy ending and character development, a break from that grimdark feeling of the right thing being impossible or futile. My thesis is that Abercrombie started from cynicism with the First Law, and slowly got more idealistic as his books went on.

Do you think Joe Abercrombie took GRRM as an inspiration? Some of the characters seem very reminiscent each other: Sandor Clegane and Caul Shivers are basically identical physically/philosophically. Brienne and Bremer dan Gorst seem like dark mirrors of each other etc

I don’t think character to character comparisons is the right way to talk about it, because it leads to somewhat superficial analysis. Caul Shivers only starts to resemble Sandor towards the end of Best Served Cold, and he’s a very different person from Sandor in the several books before that, whereas Sandor starts out ASOIAF a determined misanthrope, has that attitude shattered by Sansa’s decency, and (so far) ends up a man at peace. 

Rather, I think Abercrombie extrapolated from the supposed “realism” of GRRM’s work, missed the Romanticism, and wound up in pure grimdark.