Before They Are Hanged by Joe Abercrombie

This volume splits the action into three areas: the North where Colonel West only finds help from Logen Ninefinger's gang of Northmen when the war (and the Crown Prince's idea of strategy) goes bad; the South where Superior Glotka faces a battle he cannot win to keep a city the Union does not want; and the far reaches of the world, where Bayaz leads a barbarian from the North, the military darling of the capital, a former slave, a navigator, and his apprentice to find a weapon that can help end a war that's been centuries in the making. Abercrombie handles a large cast of characters adeptly--all of them tortured (and most of them bearing the scars of that torture), and most of them troubled and morally ambiguous--and he makes readers appreciate the characters and understand their conflicts. I can't wait to see how this trilogy ends.