Abercrombie's deep concern for character development is unique not only in its very existence, but in the way in which he sets it against the plot.  The plot of this trilogy has, to this point, been a simple one. In The Blade Itself, a decadent nation, the Union, was on the verge of a war for which it found itself ill-prepared.  Along came Bayaz, First of the Magi, just in time to remind it of its former glory and to gather up a band of miscreants to set out on a quest for a mysterious ancient weapon.  The handful of main point-of-view characters engaged in their own struggles along the way, but such personal conflicts have not derailed the central story arc. 

Before They Are Hanged, the trilogy's second volume, begins right where the first book left off.  Bayaz and Co. continue on and eventually complete the first leg of their quest, only to find something unexpected at the end of it.  In the North and South of the continent, respectively, Superior Glokta and Colonel West continue to hold the enemy at bay.

It's deceptively simple, when you think about it: these novels lack the complexity of most heavy fantasy tomes.  Only at the close of this second book does Mr. Abercrombie begin to focus on the significance of several unanswered questions.

Set against such a simple story, the detailed characters to be found in Before They Are Hanged sometimes produce an illusory feeling of sedateness.  That is to say, even though this book is action packed, the depth to which the author explores each of his characters sometimes makes the simplest day's march a long, plodding ordeal.  I call such feelings illusory because I think the occasional slowness of pace is due more to reader perceptions and expectations than to any actual pacing problem on Mr. Abercrombie's part.  When you expect a book to feature shallow story-telling and it instead shows you something more complex, you sometimes feel a bit unprepared.

Which is where the fight scenes come in.  Joe Abercrombie is a refreshing alternative to someone like Robert Jordan, for instance.  He doesn't focus too much on the boring details of troop movements or the "big picture" of battle.  He gets the strategic elements out of the way as efficiently as possible and then cuts directly to the human element, to the one-on-one.  Military strategy is a necessary concern when writing any novel about war, but focus on it too much and you lose most readers.

Sand dan Glokta, Logen Ninefingers, and even Captain Luthar are all characters who have felt intimately the horrors of war.  In Glokta's case, his past torture and maiming at the hands of the Gurkish enemy left him a crippled husk of a man, possessed only of a vibrant cynicism and the naked, unabashed desire to continue breathing, whatever the cost.  Logen Ninefingers is Abercrombie's berserker, an almost invincible warrior who has the scars of countless lives on his body.  Mostly, though, he's just as glad as Glokta to be still alive: "I'm still alive, still alive," he often intones.  Such is his mantra.

And Jezal Luthar?  Perhaps the most obvious example of Joe Abercrombie's character-building, Luthar's character arc sees him begin as a petulant narcissist and, with the help of a few more experienced friends, become a more reasonable, realistic man.  Abercrombie himself, like his characters, strives to be realistic about things: "Jezal is probably the one who changes most. He begins as a complete shit and ends as ... well, slightly less of a shit. That's the kind of progress I hope for in my own life," he said, in an interview with Elbakin.net.

And that's the strength of Abercrombie's writing: his characters truly change.  Seeing that happen is worth the occasional plod through a day's march, because without characters that respond realistically and dramatically to their environment, even the most fantastic, gleaming universe ultimately falls flat.

Before They Are Hanged is a worthy middle book, bringing the events begun with The Blade Itself to a head.  By the end of the novel, the conflicts have already begun to weave themselves together toward climax.  Most importantly, perhaps, Mr. Abercrombie manages with this second effort to improve upon his style and even inject a needed dose of mystery and anxiety into the storyline.  Nothing happens as the characters anticipate, and new players have come forward whose role and allegiance the author has yet to make clear.  Just who are Valint and Balk, and what is their interest?  The sense of mystery (and of mysticism, for that matter), which we find so central to a good fantasy novel, has revealed itself as ever-present, if subtle.  We can't wait to see what happens next and how Joe Abercrombie ultimately completes his beautifully irreverent first attempt at epic fantasy.