Last Argument of Kings (The First Law, #3)
I was torn whether or not to give this book four or five stars, because finishing it has revealed this series to be an even more brilliant deconstruction of traditional fantasy tropes than I thought possible. But in the end I just can't give five stars to something I don't love, no matter how brilliant and unflinchingly honest it might be, and I have yet to love anything that doesn't at least leave me some room for hope about this thing we call humanity. Hope ain't one of this book's watchwords. In fact, the only character who contemplates it ends up throwing himself out of a window.
Last Argument of Kings, at the very least, proves Joe Abercrombie a force to be reckoned with. Any dude who can write something this bleak and bloody and still give the reader a rollicking good time is a top quality writer. His characters are douchebags, self-entitled, amoral, violent, unclean douchebags . . . and yet by the end, if you have the patience to stick through it, you like them just as much as if they weren't douchebags. It's quite a feat, really.
I already have his other two books, Best Served Cold and The Heroes, on my shelf, and the ending of this trilogy only makes me anticipate reading them more. Hell, if this romantic, air-headed, non-violent fool (who spent six hours last week making fake princesses on the internet) can enjoy something so hardcore in the "man-fantasy" camp, then probably just about anyone could enjoy it. I guess you could say I'm a fan.