Nine Muses

Though I am enjoying the overall writing style and the character description quite a bit, I am slightly frustrated with Joe Abercrombie’s The Blade Itself.  I am on page 128.  There are only 527 pages.  This means that I am roughly 20 percent done with the book.  I think that this is an adequate amount of time to have at least started in on the plot.  Maybe it is there and I’ve somehow missed it.  It just seems to me that none of the characters have any real sense of direction.

Yes, the characters have minor goals that they may or may not have met at this point.  Yes, Luthar wants to win the Contest, but he’s sort of a whiny bitch about it.  Yes, Logen has made it to his preliminary goal, though that still doesn’t tell us much about where he’s actually going or what he wants.  Yes, we know Glokta is suffering but has a glimmer of human in him somewhere.  All this has served to do, to my mind, is to establish the characters as they are.  They haven’t grown (and granted, it’s early for that) and I have no idea where they might be going, or how they all connect.  And I feel that, at 20 percent in, there should be some sense of direction.

It’s just a little frustrating, because I want to enjoy the book, but to this point it has not given me any real reason to continue reading.  There’s no urge to know what’s going to happen next, because nothing of consequence is happening.

I’ll keep with it.  I’ve read slow starting books before and managed to hang on until things start happening.  Only once have I been annoyed enough (and invested little enough) to put the book down with no intention of finishing (Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell).  I just wish they’d get to the story already.