Grim, unrelenting, but good for all that.
4 stars
Content warning Spoiler-ridden thoughts
I am very late coming to this - my friends have been singing its praises since it was published, and it's only in the last year or so I decided to pick these up and work through them. It's worth, and I'll probably look for some of Abercrombie's other stuff.
I'll confess I'm not a huge fan of stories that revel in darkness or insist on being uncompromising in their portrayal of the frailty and corruption of human beings. I can respect it done well, but it's not something I love.
This is a case of it done well - in fact, I think particularly well. I don't read much fantasy these days, and this impressed me (though I have some criticisms, which I'll come to in a second). Since the modern authors started properly deconstructing the tropes of the classic high fantasy genre, they've become ever more "gritty" and merciless in the treatment of the characters, who are tapestries of strengths and weaknesses rather than caricatures or icons of good or evil.
I guess the most famous of such authors is George RR Martin, but with this trilogy I think Abercrombie beats him. Partly by keeping the story under control so that it hasn't expanded and ultimately beaten him, but also because he makes a very deliberate decision to make none of the point of view characters have a full grasp of the actual power plays that are driving events. The point is to keep the perspective "in the trenches", so to speak, so it is only after the fact that we come to understand what was really going on, as momentous, historic events overturn the established order and a new age begins. Even then, there is only one POV character who might possibly understand, and even he probably doesn't see the full story.
The result is that the story always feels bigger than the characters, but the characters are themselves generally interesting enough that following them for their own small motivations within this bigger narrative that they cannot see, is compelling and satisfying.
While this is for the main very well done, with admirable skill and discipline by Abercrombie, there are a few times when it drags, and when the main events come to a head, we get a good 150 or so pages (maybe more?) of epilogue. That epilogue drags quite badly as a result, and while there is a lot to like in it, it is here that a few actions are taken to be almost mean-spirited in the finishes. Anything positive in the outcome is poisoned and corrupt. Where someone might have really done well, accident or happenstance ensure that it is undone or soured.
What is more, there is a very deliberate "history repeats itself" pattern which is too complete and too pat for the textured, insistence on messy patternlessness that is present in the rest of the story.
Overall, a mostly rollicking good read (until it drags), with excellent (though grim and mostly unpleasant) characters, and certainly one of the better deconstructive takes on the fantasy genre.