What is Joe Abercrombie reading?

The current featured contributor to Writers Read: Joe Abercrombie, author of the First Law Trilogy: The Blade Itself, Before They Are Hanged and Last Argument of Kings.

His entry begins:

Over the last couple of weeks - in an airport, on a flight, and standing on the stairs for an hour this evening - I have been reading an exciting first novel that has set its genre aflame, called The Blade Itself.

I know what you're thinking. "But isn't that your book? How dare you promote it in such a barefaced manner? You pompous arse!" And you'd be right. I am a pompous arse. But not for that reason. Because although I have been reading an exciting first novel entitled The Blade Itself, the genre it set aflame was not fantasy but crime, and the author was not me, but a very pleasant young man from Chicago called Marcus Sakey.

Allow me to explain.[read on]

Learn more about the author and his work at Joe Abercrombie's website and blog.

Best Served Cold, a standalone book set in the same world as the First Law Trilogy, is due in June 2009.

Scott Lynch, author of The Lies of Locke Lamora, on Abercrombie's writing: "If you're fond of bloodless, turgid fantasy with characters as thin as newspaper and as boring as plaster saints, Joe Abercrombie is really going to ruin your day. A long career for this guy would be a gift to our genre."

Writers Read: Joe Abercrombie.

--Marshal Zeringue