Right off the bat, I could tell A Little Hatred had addressed a lot of my criticisms from Abercrombie's earlier books. No longer was the prose overly reliant on repetitive phrases and there was a large set of new characters, with actual female characters with agency and purpose beyond simply being the fixation of another male character. In a lot of ways, I found the first half of this book to easily be the best of his writing, and I was thinking it might actually become a favorite of mine. The story introduces us to a whole host of new characters, many of whom feel multi-dimensional. Seeing their tensions tested through the growing social and political unrest was expertly done. This new generation of characters have inherited certain qualities and beliefs from their parents, and my favorite parts of the book were undoubtedly the moments where they interact with their parents. Unfortunately, I did cool down on the book during the second half when some of his worst tendencies reared their head again. Frankly, I have not cared about the storyline in the North throughout this series and I continue to not care again in this book, with the people in power changing as various factions fight for control without ever giving us a reason to care about why they are fighting. This book reinforces that with certain characters meeting their end without ever really making us care about them to begin with. It just seems like an easy way for Abercrombie to add in action, especially in a book like this where there really shouldn't be a ton of action to begin with. And like my earlier reviews, I find his action really uninteresting. The North aside, my other two complaints are more minor. I found it slightly unbelievable how our cast of characters just happen to run into each other, with everyone having sex with everyone else. Maybe it is intentional (unlike with his action), but Abercrombie's sex scenes are equally unpleasant to read, so beyond being unbelievable, it also just wasn't fun to read. My final criticism is that there does not really seem to be a larger plot or thematic underpinning to this story. I was hoping this final series would start to bring together a lot of the different setup from the earlier books together. It doesn't do that really, with it feeling like it is telling a new story with a new cast of characters. There is no further exploration of the lore or the magic, and most earlier characters are just given a passing mention. I think you could start with this book and not actually miss out on much outside of some nice family moments built on knowledge of what the parents went through. Of course, this can change in the next 2 books. Overall though, criticisms aside, I do think this is a much stronger entry into the series that I actually enjoyed reading for large parts of its runtime.