Reviews with content warning for Death - Last Argument of Kings

It was a fitting end to the series and although the end is unsatisfying, the storylines are wrapped up and the mysteries revealed. I saw a couple of twists coming, but there were plenty of surprises too. This isn't my favorite book of the series but it's still very good. As always, the (male) characters have incredible depth and its so interesting to read their POVs. I think this book was more violent than the others and I found myself skimming through the fight scenes.

My thoughts on characters:
Logan: he was my favorite POV in the previous books but he took a dark turn in this one. He had less agency than normal and you can see how he got his reputation. Although he claims to not want to fight and kill, he never makes any decisions to break the cycle of violence. I still think he is a good person but I don't think as highly of him.

Glokta: he is an absolutely terrible person. No redeeming him but he doesn't want to redeem himself despite occasionally doing a single good thing. His POVs were sometimes annoying because they were so self pitying but at the same time, his sarcasm was amusing.

Jezal Luther: he seemed like the biggest character improvement which was honestly surprising and kinda sudden. Who knows if it will stick. He seems like the perfect candidate to be a figurehead. He will be fine.

Bayaz: what a spider with his fingers in every pot. Honestly not sure how he managed it all since it seemed like he only had a couple of people close to him. He also knew so much but also missed some really big points.

Dogman: my favorite character. His falling out with Logan was heartbreaking.

Collem West: a mostly ok person. Tried really hard all the time. He had major anger issues that didn't get shown enough imo. He lost my respect when he hit Ardee, no matter how sorry he was.

Ferro: she doesn't as much character development and her POVs were pretty boring. She seems like she ended up where she wanted to be from the beginning, killing Gurkish people. I thought it weird that she didn't react to Logan. Of all the characters, we know the least about her backstory and she was the hardest to connect with since she has such a one track mind. It would have been nice to get some more personality from her. All she did was kill things, sleep with Logan, and be able to hold a stone.

Ardee West: the women in these books got the short end of the stick. When Ardee was introduced, I thought she would be a major player since she was so smart and outspoken. But instead she became a drunk who didn't impact the story besides being used to advance the storylines of her brother, Jezal, and Glokta. We are supposed to believe that she is happy taking care of Glokta shitty bedsheets now?? Very disappointing.

Queen Terez: I'm going to be honest, the treatment of Terez put such a bad taste in my mouth that it ruined the book for me a bit. I had been so relieved that there wasn't much sexual violence in the first books that what Glokta makes her do is so shocking and disgusting to me. I know the point of the book is that villains aren't usually punished. But even with all the violence and suffering in the book, this was especially vile. The only gay character in the book being forced to have sex with Jezal and have at least four children or else her lover will be raped? Honestly, I found that scene more nauseating than all the death and physical violence.

Women in First Law books: I was honestly a bit disappointed by the female characters in these books. The female representation isn't as bad as other fantasy books, but it's not as good as I had hoped. I don't think they passed the Bechdel test despite the large cast of characters. Ferro was the only one we got a POV from, and although she was powerful and had the potential to be an interesting character, she didn't feel as real as the other POVs. The more minor characters were disappointingly lacking agency or a credible backstory. The only female wizard was bitter and not over Bayaz. The Makers daughter was tragic, bitter, evil, and not over Bayaz. The witch who worked for Bethod had no backstory even though she could have been as interesting as the Feared. The previous queen lost both sons and a husband within a year and is never mentioned again. The female Practical (who's name I'm forgetting) was another physically strong woman but it seemed so weird to make her have a romantic history with the mercenary. She was another person that I thought might play a larger roll than she did.

Content Warnings

nerdkitten's review

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dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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esknight89's review

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

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mikarala's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

The final reveal is almost good enough to make me up my rating...but not quite.

Basically sums up my feelings about this series. There are a lot of really interesting, bold elements to this story, and when it all comes together, it feels pretty brilliant, but overall I'm not a fan of how the story builds towards this climax. I feel as though a lot of narrative time and space is taken up by sideplots and secondary storylines, while the main conflict feels sort of undercooked. I really appreciate the genre subversions with the villain and the bleak examinations of power and human nature, but there are enough aspects of this story that frustrated me that I can't really rate it higher.

Spoilers ahead for my specific issues:

Frankly, I had a hard time getting invested in the whole Khalul and his Eaters coming with his Gurkish hordes to attack Adua. I appreciate that the point is that Khalul doesn't actually matter and Bayaz is the real enemy here, as a megalomaniac puppetmaster who likes to play the wise old wizard friend, but to me the lack of development of the opposition kind of weakens that eventual twist. Like, the idea that Bayaz and Khalul are just using the Union and Gurkhul as proxies in their war against each other is great, but I do think that reveal would have been more meaningful if Khalul had been built up more as a villain. Also, on a meta level, I don't appreciate that the Gurkish army are basically this underdeveloped horde of evil brown/Asian peoples. The way they're depicted as less skilled than their white Union/Northmen opponents, but having the strength of numbers, really plays into racist tropes like the Yellow Peril. The fact that it's not challenged or deconstructed at all leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Somewhat related to the previous point, while I find the actual lore fascinating, the way we learn about the lore throughout the story kind of feels belated. It's almost like we're learning about some of the more mystical world-building elements literally as they're having an impact on the story. For that reason, I kind of found it hard to follow or even care about it at times. We spent so much story time developing the conflict in the North, which is basically only relevant to Logen's character arc in the end and a distraction from the main plot, while the big magical conflict at the core of the entire trilogy's climax felt underdeveloped to me. Honestly, I found it disappointing that Bethod & his witch had very little importance in the end; it seemed like a waste to me, and I thought they were going to be connected to the main plot in some meaningful way.

Of course, there were plenty of things I liked about this story anyways. I thought the way the character arcs ended was quite satisfying, albeit pretty depressing too. This book stripped back a lot of the pretense with our main characters, really hammering home the point that they aren't heroes. In the epic fantasy genre, you expect the journey to have a meaningful impact on characters and change their circumstances. But this is a grimdark story, so...

even though the characters become more self-aware of their flaws, they don't fundamentally change. The change in circumstances is not matched by a significant change in beliefs, attitudes, or habits. Even the characters that want to change things find they don't really have the power to do anything different from before,

and while that's a bleak message to send, I also found it kind of satisfying, in a twisted way. I guess because it fits in with what was already established. This is a crapsack world without happy endings, so it would feel cheap if that's what our characters got. Actually, the story kind of deconstructs a couple of seemingly happy endings, which I really enjoyed.

I also found the book quite funny at times, moreso than the first two books, even. While the wry and understated tone can sometimes do a disservice to more dramatic moments that I think would be well-served by a little more emphasis, it does have the benefit of allowing for some quite funny black humour. Like, there's a moment where Glokta basically rhetorically queries

why everyone backstabs him, and Ardee sarcastically replies that maybe it's because he's a villainous backstabber who tortures people for a living

. The lampshade hanging made me laugh out loud.

So it is what it is, I guess. Overall I can't help but feel that this series was full of a lot of wasted potential and intriguing elements that could have been handled better, however, I still quite enjoyed the ride. All of my positive feelings are kind of tempered by disappointment in what could have been improved, but this series is still a fascinating examination and deconstruction of many character archetypes and fantasy tropes that I can definitely recommend.

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imspaceman's review against another edition

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adventurous dark sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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harley_merlin's review against another edition

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adventurous dark funny mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

Ich habe diese Reihe vor einem halben Jahr angefangen. Demnach habe ich ganz schön lange gebraucht, was aber nicht an dem Buch lag, sondern eher daran, dass ich mich nicht so lange auf die Geschichte konzentrieren konnte. Eigentlich war sie bis jetzt sehr gut, voller Humor und angenehm brutal, mir waren die einzelnen Bücher aber ein wenig zu lang. Die Charaktere des Buches waren sehr angenehm. Es gab keine Superhelden und auch keine wirklichen Schurken. Dadurch konnte man sich selbst ein Bild von den Charakteren bilden und sich in viele von ihnen hineinversetzen. Die ganze Geschichte war ein wenig blutig, es wurde aber so dargestellt, dass man es eher lustig als brutal fand. Mir hat außerdem gefallen, dass die einzelnen Persönlichkeiten menschliche Probleme und Gefühle hatten und dass ich dadurch mit jedem mitfühlen konnte. Auch die, die am Anfang unnahbar und gefühlskalt wirkten, lernte ich mit der Zeit fast schon zu lieben. Ich denke sie alle hätten mal eine feste Umarmung nötig, auch wenn nicht alle sie verdient hätten. Ich muss sagen, dass ich die ganze Reihe bis hier hin geliebt habe und mich schon riesig auf den nächsten Teil freue. Leider gab es einen blöden Cliffhanger und ich habe das nächste Buch noch nicht zuhause. Ich empfehle das Buch jedem, der blutige Geschichten mit vielen Intrigen mag, auch wenn man es nur entweder hassen oder lieben kann.

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bookbelle5_17's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional funny mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Review of The Last Argument of Kings

By: Joe Abercrombie

In this final installment in the First Law trilogy, our characters find themselves at war with the Gurkish. Each of our characters are in places they never thought they would be and having to make difficult decisions.

This is a great finale that just pulls no punches as so many surprises and twists and turns happen throughout the story. Jezal dan Luther has had the most character growth and finds himself in a leadership position that forces him to be selfless rather than self-centered. I felt bad for him a lot throughout this book, because he is struggling and feels so alone. Logen also finds himself in a leadership position and has accepted that he has a dark side. My suspicions, are confirmed about Bayaz being an antagonist. This goes in a direction of having a bunch of secondary antagonists and revealing one major antagonist later. I like how this shows a hierarchy of enemies and there’s not always one bad guy. This also reflects how everyone has their own definition of righteousness. In the real world, things aren’t black and white and there are no true villains or heroes We do finally get an appearance of Bethod, but I wish he had more page time and we got more of his side of the story. Of course, Bethod is just a secondary villain and just villain they have to take care of to get to main villain. . This story has no heroes, just people trying to do good, and villains, who feel like they are doing what is best for running things. Abercrombie continues to describes things in graphic detail, like the scenes where Glokta is torturing people for information, or the brutal battles between characters. I love how the trilogy continues to show how there is a solution, but not always one you will be completely happy with.

Content Warnings

tmidge22's review against another edition

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adventurous dark fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

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