Just Finished Reading Last Argument of Kings by Joe Abercrombie

Fantasy writer Joe Abercrombie came up with a winner when he produced his First Law trilogy.  Not only is the premise original, but the characters are so intense and unforgettable that after it's all over, you want him to continue on writing about them.  When I just finished reading book #3, titled Last Argument of Kings, that's just the conclusion I reached. If you want archetypally noble and upstanding protagonists and dastardly, purely evil villains in your fiction, I urge you to move on...the main characters here (the "good" guys) are an inquisitional torturer (Glokta), a brutal, murdering Viking-type warrior (Logen), and a vain, immature nobleman (Jezal).  Yet, especially with Glokta, whose private thoughts Abercrombie shrewdly inserts into every interaction he has with others and reveals a humanity even this abject figure shares with us, they each have their own struggles with their conscience and desire to make things better...or at least survive to another day.  The violence in this series is extreme, lots of mauling and killing, so if you're "kind of " squeamish I "kind of" don't recommend it!  After Last Argument of Kings came out in 2008, the author wrote several related short stories and three standalone novels, each one taking place in the years following the trilogy's timeframe...I plan to read the novels, as well as a spinoff trilogy that he is reportedly working on.  I can't go into much detail about what happens in Last Argument of Kings because I don't want to spoil the series for potential readers...even describing events at its beginning would reveal too much about the endings of books #1 and #2.  I'll just say that if you like fantasy fiction and are tired of excess derivation crossing over from one author's series into another's, then The First Law just might be for you...it's now definitely near the top of my fantasy favorites...