RR Teeth and Fingers

In Teeth and Fingers, terrible things happen in a very short time. Think you're ready? Then join Rocky as she reads The Blade Itself.


Hello, world. I fell behind a little on Rocky Reads, but I think I'll do two posts today to make up for lost time.

My first thought upon reading this chapter's title was, "Oh no. Is removing teeth and fingers how Glokta's going to get Teufel to confess? D:" That's literally what I wrong in my Rocky Reads journal. Emoticon included. And you know, I was only half right, which is really cool. I like that I only had 2 or 3 pages I tried to predict, and I picked a relatively good (if not a bit obvious) prediction, and I was still partially wrong. Props to Abercrombie for taking what I expected to happen and just saying, "No."

Basically in this chapter, Glokta starts his confession session with Teufel. Teufel recognizes him and we find out officially that Glokta was tortured-- though it was pretty obviously implied before-- but what's really cool here is how much we learn from this little bit about Glokta. We get a nice description of things that are wrong with Glokta-- his missing teeth, mirrored from top jaw to bottom jaw so that where he has one on the top, he doesn't have one on the bottom and vice versa, making it impossible to chew anything; his inability to stand while peeing; only being 35 and needing help to get out of bed in the morning. Pieces of Glokta's past are starting to come together. He was in the army, he was tortured (though by which side, I'm not really sure) and yet none of this is something we learn from Glokta himself. It's all had to be said by a third party, someone who recognizes Glokta. And some pretty important people are recognizing Glokta, he seems to be sorta famous.

(Also, I think it's painted really well exactly how crippled Glokta is, because it wasn't until this chapter we learn his age. From all the descriptions of how he walks, even knowing he has a bad leg and was tortured, I assumed he was in his 50's. Finding out he's only 35 was a really fantastic way to emphasize his handicaps.)

What I like most about Teufel being the one who's talking about Glokta and helping to reveal his past a little bit is that it speaks volumes about Glokta's character. He's very much in the present. He focuses on the pain of his injuries, yet he doesn't let that stop him from living his life. More specifically, he doesn't dwell on the past. He doesn't think about how he got his injuries or dream about what could've been. He thinks about what he's doing now and how it will affect him in the future. There's no sense in worrying about why he's crippled as he is or what could've been if he wasn't in the King's army or whatever, so he doesn't. He focuses specifically on things he can change. That's the "Teeth" part of the chapter that I just didn't anticipate, but I really liked it.

Aaand then he goes and starts chopping off Teufel's fingers of his left hand, bit at a time, until Teufel agrees to confess. It's a terrible thing to do, but I can't say I'm actually angry at him. And honestly, part of the reason I can excuse his acts here is because the first half of the chapter was about all the terrible things that were done to him. So I feel like it's justified almost. And he's also got orders to get a confession out of Teufel. And Arch Lector is probably already on the way to get Teufel's confession, which if Glokta doesn't have, then he'll be sent to Angland as well.

I mean, no doubt this is not an awesome thing to be doing, but the way Abercrombie presents everything that's going on is done really flawlessly. He never asks me to excuse Glokta for doing this, he never even hints that what Glokta's doing is justified. Yet here we are.

The writing style for Glokta is amazing, too. There's a lot of really beautiful or funny and witty quotes.

Every day is its own little hell for me. Every day. So tell me, can you seriously believe that anything you might say could scare me?