“The fantasy I read as a kid did often take place in this medieval sandbox where nothing really developed or changed, where conflict comes from a battle between an objective good and evil rather than rising out of social forces and changes as it does in the real world. Unusually for epic fantasy, the story takes place at a time when money is becoming the new power and the middle classes are rising mercantile forces are afoot. In trying to do the opposite, it becomes quite pessimistic and grim.” It’s a reaction against the shiny and optimistic heroic fantasy I read as a teenager. Gritty, violent, cynical and redolent with dark humour, “it was my take on Lord of the Rings, but bringing in all my weird preoccupations about how people work, the nature of violence. That something was 2006’s The Blade Itself, following the adventures of torturer Inquisitor Glokta, barbarian warrior Logen Ninefingers, and the dashing but vain swordsman Jezal dan Luthar. “I can remember my mother saying – she denies this – ‘This is not nearly as bad as I thought it would be’. Abercrombie spent months refining every paragraph, even “taking it seriously enough” to show it to his parents, who are still his first readers and biggest critics. “I was taking myself, and the fantasy genre, much less seriously.” He kept the same characters, the same storyline, but “straight away it had this much more world-weary, humorous voice,” he says.
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