I just finished reading A Little Hatred, by Joe Abercrombie.

Synopsis: A new age has dawned on the Circle of the World. The fires of industry have been lit, and cannot be stopped. Progress, mad and uncontrollable progress, is the word of the day, leading to massive profits for some, and unbearable oppression for others. This is a world that has never heard of things like child labor laws, and the King’s Inquisition is there to break anyone who so much as talks about forming a union.

And yet some things are still the same. There’s still a war in the north. There’s still innocent people getting killed for no good reason at all, everywhere you turn. And the First of the Magi is still behind the scenes, with his fingers on everyone’s strings.

It’s been a while since I read Abercrombie’s First Law trilogy, which I picked up years ago mostly because I liked the titles. Since then he’s written a couple of stand-alone novels set in the same world, and also a rather good post-apocalyptic series, but this is the first time he’s directly carried on the story from First Law. A Little Hatred is about the adventures of a new generation in the same world, dealing with new problems and old secrets.

I really, really enjoyed it.

Abercrombie has some things that annoy me in his writing. He never really gets into the details of the economics and logistics of his wars, preferring instead to focus on the grim and bloody struggle of warriors in the mud. Which is fine, but…I like details, sometimes. A Little Hatred is, unfortunately, somewhat light on details about the world. 

But damn is this book long on character.

Every single character in this book feels like a real person. I feel like I have met these people, though some of them I wish I hadn’t. Every bit of dialogue, every interaction, every time the novel threw together two characters to see what would happen, it felt completely natural and compelling. It’s one of those books where you want to see each combination of characters in a room together just talking, and much to my delight we got almost exactly that in the form of a grand party near the end of the novel. It was fantastic. Please give me more of these people just hanging out with each other (I’d ask for more deliciously written fight scenes as well, but I know Abercrombie’s going to give me those whether I want them or not).

This focus on characters does come with some problems. A few of the plot twists are way, way too soap-opera for my tastes (especially one which I probably should have seen coming except that it’s been years and years since I read First Law). And, again, the world that the characters are operating in never really gets the detail that I think it deserves. There’s never any full explanation of Savine’s business, or any explanation for how the army of Stour Nightfall is feeding themselves if they keep burning everything, or anything like that. There’s never any deeper explanations, you just have to ignore the little things so you can follow this really quite engaging story.

The characters, now, they’re real. All the old ones that return from the First Law, and all these excellent new ones. I’m especially fond of Crown Prince Orso, at least partially because the book description on Amazon played a trick on me (minor spoilers for the rest of the paragraph). He’s described on the book jacket as “A man who specializes in disappointments,” and when we first see him in the book he does indeed seem to be a complete waste of space, but he’s very quickly revealed to be a clever and kind young man who has been told that he’s stupid and shameful for his entire life. Thanks to that description of him on the book jacket, I was able to experience for myself the surprise of every person he meets who discovers that the infamous fop of a prince is actually a pretty cool guy, which really was an excellent bit of storytelling. Not 100% sure if it was intentional, but still.

This is the second book I’ve read in a row where I dearly want the sequel. I need to stop reading recently-published books that are number one in a trilogy and go read something that’s actually finished now, or I’m going to die of frustrated desire for more story.