Last Argument of Kings

Unlike with the names of the previous two novels in The First Law trilogy, this last one's origin I was familiar beforehand: There's a roguelike in development called Ultima Ratio Regum -- Last Argument of Kings -- which are the words King Louis XIV had had cast on his armies' cannons. The novel's title is again maybe somewhat relevant to its plot but I feel it's again mostly there just because it's cool.

First Magus Bayaz faced a setback when the Seed he was looking for wasn't where he thought it was. In this novel, he and his party quickly return from their adventure. They kind of disband, but still stay in the capital Adua, excluding Logen who returns to the north and rejoins with his old band whom he thought dead -- and who thought likewise of Logen. They join the Union's army to fight Bethod and settle their score with him. Meanwhile the Gurkish invasion finally happens and the trilogy culminates in the siege of Adua.

There are multiple things I liked in the novel; when I finished it, my thoughts were the same as with the first one in the trilogy: what an awesome book!

For instance, how Bayaz is far from having given up despite his plan failing. He wasn't exactly trying to hide is superiority before but in Last Argument he stops trying to be likeable to everyone he considers to be below him (which is about everyone). Slowly his years, probably decades long preparations and contingencies get revealed. He is very much in control of the Union's politics -- or at least is able to grasp it into his control when the need arises.

I liked how the main viewpoint characters -- Logen Ninefingers, Sand dan Glokta, and Jezal dan Luthar -- reflect upon their lives throughout the story. Jezal is a pawn in Bayaz's game although so is everyone really. Glokta continues his antihero antics and is in his pain-filled wreck of a body still very likeable.

Logen struggles with his conflicting dual nature. It is quite uncertain if he likes or dislikes his berserker alter ego. He supposedly has no control over it yet he tends to get into situations in which unstoppable rage is the only option. And he doesn't try to excuse his actions when someone on his supposed side gets killed by him in berserk. He seemingly tries to do good, yet the results don't exactly lead to people liking him more, at least not among the Northmen.

Logen is such an amazing character, and so are the rest. It is great in how an unusual situation things end up -- everyone hating each other -- yet the story still being so enjoyable. Joe Abercrombie's way of storytelling feels brave: no smooth characters but hoarse, unapologizing, and unpretty. The First Law trilogy gets a high recommendation from me.

The novel's Finnish translation, however -- again by Satu Hlinovsky -- isn't perfect. My first issue was how she had translated 'greater good' literally ('suurempi hyvä') which just shows poor grasp of Finnish in my opinion. It made me cringe the same way the (too often used) literal translations of expressions like 'in the long run' and 'in the big picture' do because they're just slightly off the proper Finnish ones.

In addition, in the final 50 pages or so, quality control seems have been completely thrown out of the window. I spotted at least a dozen typos: words not capitalized or just misspelled. And then, what I assume (since I don't have original text) is a straight-up translation error, when Glotka's spoken line ends in an ellipsis and he (presumably) 'trails off'. That had been translated as if he had walked away, which just made no sense since the dialogue continues without him having gone anywhere.

There were also the mysterious bows people in the books use though that maybe wasn't technically an error on translation. I had been wondering what this "laakajousi" was and decided finally to look it up after finishing the third book. Google search returned one (1) result about some mechanical part which was clearly not right so I looked up what's the original word Abercrombie had used. That turned out to be 'flatbow'.

A forum post informed me that Abercrombie had reasoned that in a world without Christianity a crossbow wouldn't be called that (Is that the actual etymology of crossbow?) and instead had come up with the word flatbow, unaware it already had an established use as a type of bow. The Finnish word(s) for crossbow (varsijousi/jalkajousi) doesn't have the (alleged) Christian etymology though and could have been used without issues, if you ask me.