200 Words or Less: Last Argument of Kings (The First Law #3) by Joe Abercrombie

Welcome to 200 Words or Less, a weekly Friday feature here on The Tattooed Book Geek where I will bring to you reviews/thoughts of 200 words or less from the books I read before I started blogging. We all have them, books that we read and loved or even read and hated before we decided to start blogging and what better way than a quick fire review of 200 words or less to share your thoughts on them.

My Choice:

The end is coming. Logen Ninefingers might only have one more fight in him but it’s going to be a big one. Battle rages across the North, the King of the Northmen still stands firm, and there’s only one man who can stop him. His oldest friend, and his oldest enemy. It’s past time for the Bloody-Nine to come home.

With too many masters and too little time, Superior Glokta is fighting a different kind of war. A secret struggle in which no one is safe, and no one can be trusted. His days with a sword are far behind him. It’s a good thing blackmail, threats and torture still work well enough.

Jezal dan Luthar has decided that winning glory is far too painful, and turned his back on soldiering for a simple life with the woman he loves. But love can be painful too, and glory has a nasty habit of creeping up on a man when he least expects it.

While the King of the Union lies on his deathbead, the peasants revolt and the nobles scramble to steal his crown. No one believes that the shadow of war is falling across the very heart of the Union. The First of the Magi has a plan to save the world, as he always does. But there are risks. There is no risk more terrible, after all, than to break the First Law…

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Last Argument of Kings (The First Law Trilogy Book 3) by Joe Abercrombie.

This is the concluding part in Abercrombie’s The First Law Trilogy and this book is epic, no, that doesn’t do it justice, this book is EPIC – that’s better! 🙂

Being grimdark, no-one is squeaky clean, what you get from Abercrombie are characters that straddle the line between good and bad with their actions and morality. Are they good or bad? Does  it really matter and how do you define what is good or bad anyway. No matter the answer, these are characters that over the course of the three books you come to really care about.

Names like Logen Ninefingers and Sand dan Glokta are synonymous with grimdark and for good reason, even years after reading The First Law trilogy, I remember them and their personalities, unforgettable!

Including violent and bloody fight scenes, an engaging story, plot twists you don’t see coming, excellent writing, pacing, emotion and a dry sense of humour this is a fitting end to the trilogy first started many pages ago in The Blade Itself.

More than just ‘grimdark’ this is character driven fantasy at it’s finest, it’s a journey and a classic exemplary trilogy.

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Quotes from Last Argument of Kings:

“I have learned all kinds of things from my many mistakes. The one thing I never learn is to stop making them.”

“Rules are for children. This is war, and in war the only crime is to lose.”

“Proof is boring. Proof is tiresome. Proof is an irrelevance. People would far rather be handed an easy lie than search for a difficult truth, especially if it suits their own purposes.”

“You can never have too many knives, his father had told him. Unless they’re pointed at you, and by people who don’t like you much. ”

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