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Hartastic t1_j1eacsm wrote

Probably you did mainline too much hype. That said...

  • He does a good job of writing the characters and their voice very distinctly. He doesn't need to tell you which character is talking, for example -- it's obvious.

  • In Abercrombie's novels, as in life, things don't always go great for the characters. Sometimes their deaths or endings aren't especially noble or heroic. Sometimes they try to become a better person and fail. Sometimes a character thinks they're a pretty good person, but the people around them who have to live with the consequences of their actions have a different view. Your tolerance or enthusiasm for these kinds of things probably has a lot of influence on how well you like Abercrombie's characters.

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Aplakka OP t1_j24yc2l wrote

It is true that the characters are very distinct from each other, I have to give him that.

Maybe part of it is that I'm just not that into grimdark as a genre, because at some point I get "grimness exhaustion" where I feel that if everything is miserable and pointless for the characters, it starts to feel pointless as a reader to continue reading.

But there are cases where I do like tragic things. I actually did like the point where Logen was told that his bloodlust had effectively forced King Bethod to rebellion by killing people Bethod tried to negotiate with etc. It did bring the earlier mentions of successful duels etc. to a different light, while fitting his character.

With Logen I was mainly annoyed at the ending cliffhanger (or cliffjumper maybe?), it just felt a bit too "on the nose" as a bookend for the start of the trilogy, and not the type of conclusion that I like. I think it partly soured me on him retroactively.

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