The Wisdom of Crowds

Another great trilogy by Joe Abercrombie, I think it was as good as the first and I hope eventually there will be a third.

The Age of Madness ends in the place that it has to end, I think. All of the larger plot and character arcs make sense. The Weaver's full scheme is revealed, and is utterly logical given what we know of the world of the First Law. People suffer for reasons just and unjust, make necessary decisions that destroy their souls, and achieve long-desired goals only to discover that what they wanted and what would have made them happy are far from the same thing. It's Abercrombie, in other words.The plot architecture of The Age of Madness is probably the best that Abercrombie has ever produced, but despite that, I think the work as a whole is a step below the original First Law trilogy. There's a couple of reasons for this.The first is that, while Abercrombie's better than ever at getting the pieces where they need to go, the process of seeing them advance across the board is not quite as interesting as it has been. One of the keystones of fantasy is seeing characters reveal their natures through entertaining action. Watching Bayaz's motley crew stumble their way across the Old Empire, bickering and blundering the whole way, was some absolutely first-rate character driven adventure full of wonderfully revelatory dialogue and fascinating displays of incompetence, competence, and growth. _A Little Hatred_ had a lot of the same fascination in its early stages as we met the colorfully-drawn characters of this new world and observed the fascinating mechanics of an industrial revolution swallowing up a fantasy kingdom._The Trouble With Peace_ didn't fully sustain the momentum; there was a great deal of scheming in salons and political maneuvering that, while proficiently written, didn't fully fire my imagination. I had thought that this was a middle-chapter problem, but it's back in _The Wisdom of Crowds_, and it's considerably worse. The business involving Rikke and Black Calder in the north moves along at a fair pace, albeit with a couple of twists that are telegraphed a bit too broadly to be fully effective, but I'm afraid that the French Revolution redux in Adua bogs down pretty badly. Part of the problem is that we've already seen much of the same in the previous book's Valbeck chapters; the horror is not fresh, even with the general violence level amped up. Part of it is that the victims of the Burners are, for the most part, people we've never had much opportunity to identify with, and the people we HAVE been taught to care about never seem to be in meaningful jeopardy until the book's final third.My second criticism is this. In Abercrombie's best work--The First Law, Best Served Cold, and some of the stuff in Sharp Endings--there's a powerful sense that the characters are driving the plot. Here, as never before in my experience, there's a sense that the requirements of the plot are changing the nature of Abercrombie's characters. In some cases this makes sense. Gunnar Broad, for example, is defined by the fact that he allows himself to be the instrument of other people's will, so it is reasonable that events would make him a different man. Rikke's personal transformation has been engineered both in overt ways by Isern and in subtler ways by her own hidden ambitions. Vick and Gorst are true to their own established natures, but also shaped by events in ways that their decisions and ultimate destinies make sense.In other cases, the changes are jarring and hard to fully accept. Savine dan Glokta undergoes a pretty radical personality shift in TWoC, and the explanation offered is both a bit of a cliche and (I'll be the first person ever to say these words about an Abercrombie book) a little bit twee. It's great when characters change, but in her case, the change doesn't feel fully driven by her virtues and flaws, nor by the events surrounding her; it feels like something the book needs to happen in order to get her to the place she's supposed to go. These problems manifest in minor characters as well; Tunny's portrayal is so far distant from who he's been throughout the entirety of the First Law saga, and the reasons for the transformation are so obscure, that one has to wonder whether his role wouldn't have been better occupied by an entirely new character.By far the worst example of this, though, is Leo. It goes without saying that the events that occurred at the climax of TTWP would change a man, but to me, it feels as if half his brain has been amputated. It's as if I'm reading a completely different character, and a far less interesting one. The final chapter in which we see Leo is titled "The Villain", and while Abercrombie is constitutionally incapable of making things _that_ simple, it's hard not to get the impression that Leo has been forced into a plot niche traditionally occupied by somebody else. A fellow with more limbs and less hair.And while we have all of this astonishing trauma working massive personality shifts in several of the dramatis personae, there's also Orso, sitting in his cage swilling wine and quipping away wittily, his character utterly unchanged. In many respects Orso is one of Abercrombie's most fascinating characters ever, a really interesting spin on the "playboy with hidden depths" archetype, and he's certainly an effective mouthpiece for some terrific one-liners. But to the extent that events changed him at all, it seems to me that those changes were more or less complete at the end of ALH. In TTWP, he's interesting in the sense that we see his hidden strengths revealed and contrasted with Leo's more superficial strengths. In TWoC, he's just a guy who stuff happens to.The Wisdom of Crowds leaves The First Law universe in an interesting place, and it shows many of the same strengths that have made Joe Abercrombie my favorite fantasy author. But I do feel he's taken me on more interesting rides.

“The Wisdom of Crowds” is the penultimate volume of Abercrombie’s Age of Madness trilogy, which is one of several interlinked trilogies forming the First Law world. Like all the books in this trilogy, it is a monumental achievement, an all-absorbing fantasy adventure, and a damn good read. What makes this book so fascinating to the reader is that Abercrombie strips his characters to their cores, taking away their titles, their fame, their riches, and reveals to us the flawed and desperate beings they are beneath their masks.It’s all well when you are riding high, having been dealt the winning hand, but in this world, no one can count on being on top for very long. Kings find themselves overthrown, usurped, rioted against. One leader defeats the last and so on and so forth. Each unconquerable monster eventually goes back to the mud in the face of the Great Leveller. And, it’s quite eye-opening for the characters to find themselves on the opposite side of the spectrum. A mighty warrior becomes a cripple. A princess becomes a prisoner. Every sword is pointed at someone’s back and, for some, it becomes a guessing game of how to choose the winning side. Even those who ascend to the mighty thrones find that they cannot do as they would and that perhaps they were more free wandering penniless and friendless.The action here takes place on two separate fronts. In Adua, the center of civilization, a type of Marxist revolution takes place complete with informers and secret police and a populace so in terror that everyone is willing to inform on anyone just to save their own skins. Meet the new boss, perhaps even worse then the old boss. With Half the city razed in fits of out of control madness, the old monarchy, despite its inquisition, suddenly doesn’t look half bad. This is a world of shifting alliances and trust and mistrust. Savine and Lord Brock are at the center of this maelstrom, but other characters such as Vick and Pike make important appearances.Not to be forgotten is the savage North where Tricky Rikke with the Long Eye sit in the Skarling chair, mistress of the north, but the question is how long will she hold power. Each hero who has proclaimed themselves Lord of the North sat in that same chair only to be cast down by the next hungrier Lord of the North. Jut as in the South, power has a way of changing hands here. People are fickle and always looking to ally with the next winner, leaving the losers behind.Bloody, angry, shocking, and filled with unending gallows humor, this novel is realistic fantasy filled with real authentic people who never know who to trust or who is going to betray them next. Decisions are tough and life is filled with mistakes and regrets. A novel so good that when you finish it you just want to start reading it again.

Joe Abercrombie is my favourite author and I really dug the previous entries in this series a mix of flintlock fantasy, dark satire, and a homage to Discworld of a sorts albeit a Discworld for complete bastards. So does this Wisdom of Crowds stick the landing? Absolutely but in many ways this may be his bleakest work even if it does have some very funny moments in many ways this is about the aftermath of the revolution and how even as things change they stay the same. Basically this , like all Abercrombie novels , is a mediation on human nature and not a particularly favourable one.A send off for many characters we have come to love and loathe I suspect this book will be regarded as a love or hate it affair while also setting up the future of the first law series it’s not gentle or kind and that ending woah!Which is not to say it’s still not bitingly funny and also filled with the well cherographed ultra violence we have come to expect.I don’t really want to discuss the plot because while in many ways it’s very predictable, at least if your already a Abercrombie fan, there some delightful stings in the tail.If you didn’t like the previous entries in this series this won’t change your Mind it doubles down on the political manvauring the characters are even more venomous and while there is a lot of violence it does move farther away from its epic fantasy roots in the original series. However if like me you read Abercrombie for his subversion of fantasy tropes, his bleak humour, and above all his continuity and pay off of long held fan theories then this may be his best work to date.

Abercrombie has made his last sale to me, this is a putrid addition to the first law trilogy complete and utter disregard for the reader, the plot changes so often I became bored very quickly it's shallow and lazy writing expected of a beginner but we should have seen this coming these book have slowly became less and less coherent over time the same characters with different names the same essential plot line regurgitate over and over he seems to have run flat and is now over charging us for the privilege of reading third rate garbage Never again that's the last time I will be conned into buying this garbage

Very French and Russian Revolution....Much as I like his books - and the gritty incisive turn of phrase is still there in full - this book just has the feeling of read it all before .... Calder is up, then down, then up then down etc etc over too many books, the losers are once again all getting executed as we run through those scenes again ... and again .....the rebels are going loco once again, a cripple and all his pains takes centre stage once again .... some new material badly needed to go with his skilled writing. I miss some of the central characters from earlier books who just disappeared and there are no real dynamic, goosebumps on the flesh passages which really grab the attention as previous books had, admittedly fewer as the number of books progress. Looking back to the whole First Law odyssey makes you wonder what is was all about - didn't result in anything and seems to have been chucked along with most of his interesting characters while the ones he favours now just aren't that interesting and don't cut the mustard ---- Game of Thrones on the TV seemed to go the same way. The riots and revolution in this book are a repeat of the last book, the dashing hero getting crippled with the resulting pains and bitterness are a repeat of Glockta in an earlier book - enjoyed them the first time I read the earlier books but don't want to read the same again. More focus could have been done on the People's Army and its troubles and the Loyalist Army with some new characters coming through from the ordinary ranks. Once again the carrying ons in the North redeem the book.

One of the impressive things about Joe Abercrombie's writing is his use of characters. Writing character driven - rather than plot driven - stories is the aspiration of many authors: Abercrombie shows how it's done. He has multiple main characters and a host of lesser ones, but all are well drawn and fully detailed: they stand out as recognizable individuals. Moreover, in the main characters especially we see change. They effect events and events effect them: they are not the same people at the end of the story as they were at the beginning.As a writer myself I can confirm that this isn't an easy thing to do, especially not as smoothly and authentically as Abercrombie does it, and especially not when dealing with so many different characters and plot lines. But he does it so well that I was able to see a plot twist coming up because it was consistent with the character!In case you're thinking that this means the story as a whole is predictable, be assured that there were many other twists and turns in the plotting that did catch me by surprise - though all still consistent with the characters.Overall, 'The Wisdom of Crowds' is as dark, as vivid and as absorbing as all Abercrombie's writing. It brings the trilogy to a satisfactory close - though with the door still wide open for more to come!

Comparing anything written by Joe Abercrombie to his original First Law trilogy is always unfair yet inevitable. Having said that, I can safely say that The Wisdom of Crowds may just be the best book Lord Grimdark has ever written. Very, very unpredictable, filled with twists and turns, finishes off an extremely well-planned trilogy.The battle scenes are epic, the individual storylines masterfully written, and the politics overall far superior to that of the original First Law trilogy. And what can I say about the characters? Say one thing about Joe Abercrombie, say he writes the best characters in fantasy today.It’s been great fun trying to predict how these characters might behave in certain situations, and who will end up betraying who. As gory and gritty as any Joe Abercrombie book, but in the midst of all the carnage, the author’s dark humour, also unrivalled in modern fantasy.You don’t have to be a fantasy fan to read his books. He is a top tier author, and his books have everything you could possibly wish for. The best of times for the reader, the worst of times for the characters.Highest possible recommendation, though, if you’re a First Law fan, this is pretty much a must read anyway. I am usually quite lenient with my five-star ratings, this is firmly in the six-star category.