Abercrombie is just another of those authors who thought he was going to subvert all the old fantasy cliches, but ended up doing just the opposite. He wanted to show that life for the people in fantasy wouldnt be all heroes and wizards, that people would get hurt, and that there are very few happy endings.
He thought that was “gritty” “realistic” fantasy, but his problem was that he went too far. Everybody gets fucked over. Nobody has a happy ending. Everybody ending up miserable is every bit as boring as the heroes saving the world and having a victory parade.
The ending of the First law trilogy was the best example of this. It was obvious that Abercrombie just decided that he was going to leave every character miserable and fucked up, regardless of whether it made sense storywise. Best served cold was a boring drudgery of miserable characters getting even more miserable. Now his new book is supposedly about a battle where there are no real heroes, and things turn out pretty shitty for everybody.
Joe, thats not subverting anything, thats just boring. Wheres the contrast? Wheres the reward? Wheres the point?
I think a better way to put it is this - Abercrombie makes something of a fetish of messing with the reader’s expectations, where those expectations are based on fantasy tropes.
There are many, many examples of this. Seriously don’t read the spoilers if you haven’t read the books:
The barbarian who attempts to turn his life around - doesn’t. This happens to both Ninefingers and Shivers
The “orphan-who-becomes-king-who-is-revealed-just-when-the-baddies-invade” is basically an ineffectual puppet.
The “mage and friends go on a quest” - and fail to find the Macguffin
The “mage” turns out to be pretty well as bad as the enemy
He’s “orphan-who-becomes-king” is handsome - but he loses the girl to a hideously mutilated torturer
The hideously mutilated torturer is just about the most sympathetic character
Revenge doesn’t get you anywhere - execept that it does; the main character in Best Served Cold embarks on a pitiless crusade of vengence, and gets everything she wanted and more
The trilogy ends with a literal cliffhanger - Ninefingers goes plunging off a cliff, similar to the opening (which he survived after being thought dead) - and you expect him to make an appearence in the following books - but he doesn’t. Nor is his death confirmed
The trilogy lacks maps of the world - but the Heroes has incredibly detailed maps; only, they only show one battlefield
But again, you call that messing with readers expectations, while I would say that he went too far with it. Just doing the opposite of what people expect isnt pushing any boundaries, its just as predictable as following the fantasy cliche rulebook. To think of a few examples, I bet if “The Heroes” has a farmboy with a magic sword, that he will get killed very quick by a random soldier. If there is a race of short hairy buggers with axes, I bet he will have made them delicate little creatures that are in danger of extinction at the hands of nasty fairies. See what I mean? Just subverting the cliche itself is a cliche in these days of Erikson and GRRM. You have to do something with it.
And to respond to both you and Eleanor regarding miserable endings for his characters, just take your list for examples
(comments in italics added by me)
[spoiler]
The barbarian who attempts to turn his life around - doesn’t. This happens to both Ninefingers and Shivers
Logan finds nothing but pain, killing his friends in the process, while Shivers apparently becomes a psycho nihilist, for some reason or another. Miserable
The “orphan-who-becomes-king-who-is-revealed-just-when-the-baddies-invade” is basically an ineffectual puppet.
Ineffectual puppet indeed, toothless and irrelevant, as well as losing the girl he loved. Miserable
The “mage and friends go on a quest” - and fail to find the Macguffin
The trip was totally pointless, yeah, loads-a-laughs.
The “mage” turns out to be pretty well as bad as the enemy
The mage turns out to be a smug git, who, while not exactly miserable, is only back where he started, overseeing countries he had been overseeing for centuries.
He’s “orphan-who-becomes-king” is handsome - but he loses the girl to a hideously mutilated torturer
Already addressed
The hideously mutilated torturer is just about the most sympathetic character
He is also still pissing his pants every day, knows he is still just a pawn to a superior, and knows his “wife” doesnt love him in the slightest. He has power though, I’ll admit that.*
Revenge doesn’t get you anywhere - except that it does; the main character in Best Served Cold embarks on a pitiless crusade of vengeance, and gets everything she wanted and more
Everything she wanted? As I remember, she finished the book pretty empty inside, more powerful but no happier.[/spoiler]
There are no happy endings. At best, there are characters who are not totally destroyed/miserable/buggered. The character with the most improvement in circumstances still lives in constant pain. After five books, this joy in leaving people miserable is as boring as five books of Mary Sues kicking ass.
Well, I suppose milage varies. I thought the writing was engaging, the characters well done (if often unlikable) and the world interesting.
I did not find the plot twists predicable while reading it, which would have spoiled the enjoyment certainly.
I also liked Erikson and GRRM, but the last I’m convinced is gonna die before finishing his series.
Again, I dunno if that is right. Some characters end up, if not happy, at least considerably happier than they were. That the books have a dark tone is no surprise, but I disagree that they are as predictable as all that.
A more trenchant criticism I think is that most of his characters are painted in shades of grey, morally; none are unambiguously good or bad.
I don’t really see The First Law (that’s all I’ve read of Abercrombie so far) as being just a long string of reversed expectations. I think there’s pretty much just the one reversed expectation:
[spoiler]Bayaz being the big bad - basically, finding out at the end that Gandalf was really Sauron all along.
It’s a hell of a twist, but everything else is a natural consequence of that one twist. If the main villain of your story wins, everyone else is going to end up pretty miserable. You could count each individual good guy losing as a separate reversal, but I think it’s more accurate to count it as one big reversal: the good guys lose, the bad guys win.
I also disagree with you that Glokta didn’t get a happy ending. Yeah, he’s still crippled, but there’s not really anything you can do to fix that. He still ends the trilogy wealthier, more respected, more powerful, and more loved than he began it, which I think counts as a “win” for a good guy.[/spoiler]
[spoiler]There are really no “good guys” to win. The Gurkish and the mage who is their puppet-master isn’t really any better than Bayaz - I mean, he was more justified in terms of the mythological back-story, but creating a cannibal slave empire isn’t really nice.
It is sort of as if the war of the Ring was between Saruman and Sauron … between bad and worse. Nasty as Bayaz is, the Union at least seems a nicer place than Gurkul! [/spoiler]