3.5/5


I recommend reading this review after having finished the book, since it will not be spoiler free.

“When was it exactly that I became... this? By small degrees, I suppose. Once act presses hard upon another, on a path we have no choice but to follow, and each time there are reasons. We do what we must, we do what we are told, we do what is easiest. What else can we do but solve one sordid problem at a time? Then one day we look up and fine we are... this.”


First of all, big thanks to Nicole for lending me her copy of this book and giving me the chance to finish this trilogy with the actual physical book in my hands.

One question that seems to recurrently come to mind when reading "Last Argument of Kings", the third and final installment of Joe Abercrombie's "The First Law" trilogy, is "what is the meaning of all that we go through?", a theme Joe tackles expertly, after having taken us on this exciting journey with very different characters who, despite their differences, share the crucial similarity of being profoundly flawed. These flaws, shown very clearly in the previous two installments, shine more brightly in this one, since, instead of characters going through some form of growth after all the things they have been through, most of them seem to regress even further into the same aspects that make them imperfect and downright horrible people. This, of course, is one of the greatest strong points in this book, since it doesn't betray the characters, and stays true to their nature, and is actually a realistic representation of how reality actually is. It is very rare for people to actually outgrow all the flaws that make them who they are, and on the contrary, when faced with very difficult situations, most people cling even more strongly to their ego identities, seeking refuge in the recesses of their twisted temperaments, becoming even worse than they were before.

“The more you kill, the more you get better at it. And the better you get at killing, the less use you are for anything else.”

This book is described as "Delightfully twisted and evil" by The Guardian and it does live up to that standard. Where the brutality felt a little bit cut short in the first two installments, it was more than compensated for here. The battle scenes were very vividly described, each injury/brutal death a person goes through written in verbose detail.



Another great thing this book does, true to its grimdark style, is setting up expectations of idealized moments, only to have those expectations shattered and not live up to their potential. An example of how well this was executed was Logen Ninefinger's reunification with his northern comrades. After having been separated from them at the very beginning of the first book, Logen finally goes back north and reunites with his crew, but that warm reunion, where we expected them to be by each other's sides like brothers, is quickly shattered by the reality of who Logen was before he left them. Back in Adua and with Bayaz's crew, we saw a more docile version of Logen, only with occasional blackouts where he became The Bloody Nine. But here, we saw the sides of him that truly made him detestable, and his northern friends weren't all too happy to have him back there, and their interactions were less than ideal, and a lot of messed up things took place.

“Do you know what's worse than a villain? A villain who thinks he's a hero. A man like that, there's nothing he won't do, and he'll always find himself an excuse.”

Other characters also regress back to fulfill their worst potentials. Ferro Maljinn, someone we expected to eventually find some softness underneath her hard exterior, sinks back deeper into her obsession with vengeance. We see no positive resolution to her story, and her short lived romance with Logen, which I wasn't even a fan of in the previous book, was never rekindled, and Ferro chose to go back south to continue her meaningless vendetta of revenge. Disappointing? Maybe, but it remains faithful to who Ferro truly is. Sometimes, our traumas shape us irreversibly, and we have no miraculous healing followed by a happy ending.

This pattern repeats itself with all of our main characters. Glokta, who started off this series by serving Arch Lector Sult, and torturing people under his guidance, ends up doing the same thing under the guidance of an even greater evil, Bayaz, the First of the Magi, who was clearly the main antagonist of this trilogy, if one looks at things from a bigger perspective. Glokta's main redemption point was his relationship with Ardee West, and the dynamic between these two was very nicely written, and their chemistry is undeniable. Their banter was very enjoyable to read, and Ardee definitely became one of my favourite characters in this installment.





“Because the vast majority of men would far rather be told what to do than make their own choices. Obedience is easy.”

Jezal was definitely the character who went really far ahead and was the closest character out of the bunch to reach any form of redemption, though his potential for goodness was snuffed out by Bayaz, who kept him under his firm iron grip. Bayaz, the mastermind behind most of what happened in this trilogy, is someone we definitely do not root for, and his victory at the end (hence the victory of our main characters who were more or less fighting by his side), instead of adding relief to our story, leaves us frustrated. An excellent representation of grimdark at its finest, where even the victories feel bleak and irritating, and we have no clear side to root for.


“Rare rages render a man frightening. Common ones render him ridiculous.”

What I didn't like about this book:

Although the character work was top-notch here, I'm afraid this third installment showed that the entirety of what makes this trilogy appealing was just that, characterization. The first two books made me feel like something big was being set up for the end, promising some grand delivery plot wise that makes up for the relative lack of extraordinary plotting, but this book did not deliver that to me. Instead, we got overblown battle sequences that just got too long and boring to read after 10 pages. The extensive depth of character's subjective perspectives that made them very dynamic in the first two books, felt redundant and repetitive here. I was not looking to read another 600+ pages about how every movement Glokta makes is plagued with pain, about how Logen always wants to be a better person but goes back to being a bloodthirsty monster, and about how Jezal expected fame and glory but can't cope with the responsibilities that come with them. These were more than overemphasized in the first two installments, and I was hoping for something different in the final one. However, it turns out that this was the BULK of this whole trilogy, the character work. In my opinion, Joe created beautiful characters, but he didn't create much of a great story to tell. The settings like The Old Empire and the snowy forests of Angland were simply used as stages to explore the characters. Great threats like the Shanka and the Eaters, were quickly resolved by easy plot conveniences that got rid of them quite smoothly. Key characters in the midst of dangerous battles were conveniently saved by some intervention several times, and as usual, most characters who actually clearly die are from the Northmen, who Abercrombie used to provide the bulk of the deaths in this trilogy. The world building felt too superficial, and everything else other than the characters felt underdeveloped.

This book could have been way shorter, and for the most part, it felt like it was regurgitating things we've constantly read about in the first two books. If you love the characters and don't mind this style, then this will work for you, but I personally need more plot depth than what Joe provided here. The entire first section felt like an overdrawn description of the battle with Bethod, and the constant POV changes just ruined the smoothness of the pacing of the story. The second section was similar, but it had more supernatural elements due to The Seed plot, which was also a huge plot convenience, being randomly found by Ferro and most conveniently used to perfectly tilt the battle to Bayaz's favour. All that build up of The Seed in Aulcus and The Old Empire was for nothing, since the actual consequences of The Seed being used were minuscule in comparison. The only way Joe filled the space between the hundreds of pages of character focused writing was with over the top battle sequences and graphically violent scenes, which didn't really cut it for me, since, like I said, I need more substance in the plot.

Of course, that isn't to say that I did not like this trilogy. I did enjoy reading it, and I do recommend it, since the character work is very good and the bleak way with which it ended adds a very special element to the story which we don't commonly see elsewhere. For readers who love extremely character based stories, I would say this trilogy would be an ideal read for them. I just personally would rather read something with more intricate world building and a plot that is more richly fleshed out.

I am rating this a 3.5 stars, 0.5 stars less than my typical rating for the books in this trilogy due to the aspects I just mentioned. The characters here are superb, and I will always remember them, and I am looking forward to reading more books by Joe Abercrombie, and I'm glad that some of these characters do return in the future books, since I would be very curious to continuing their stories.

“It's hard to be done a favor by a man you hate. It's hard to hate him so much afterwards. Losing an enemy can be worse than losing a friend, if you've had him for long enough.”