Reddit reviews The Heroes (Set in the World of The First Law)

If you finish reading the 2 kingkiller books (I honestly suggest reading the first and then waiting for the third to come out), read Blood Song by Anthony Ryan. Then if you have even more time, read anything by Brandon Sanderson. Mistborn series and Stormlight (I just really wanted to re-rec this one). Joe Abercrombie's The Heroes (and all of his other books, ofc). Then for even more character development, read the Coldfire trilogy. It's an older book and not as 'fast' as books written nowadays, but it has Gerald Tarrant.

The Heroes by Joe Abercrombie. This is his most battle intensive book, though Best Served Cold has a faster start and is probably his most accessible book. Both these are easier starts than The Blade Itself.

Blood Song by Anthony Ryan. This first book is mostly bildungsroman, as the main character is trained from a young age, but the later battles scenes are great. The sequel, Tower Lord is even better, with outstanding battle scenes.

Prince of Thorns by Mark Lawrence. Jorg is a right bastard, but he's always 3 steps ahead.

Sure! I am Pilgrim by Terry Hayes. The book is remarkable for its pacing; the author is somehow able to maintain high interest and tension through the slow moving parts as well as the action scenes. In the opening, he starts by moving you too quickly through a series of images from the MC's life, introducing you to his main character, a thoughtful man with an eye for detail. You're struggling to keep up, and then he throws you into a thorough but dispassionate canvass of a crime scene. You learn about the MC through his reactions to the crime scene and you form an emotional attachment to him. Within a few pages, you feel fully invested, ready to find out what happened, to know what's going to happen next.

Stephen King is a master storyteller. Look at the opening of Cell. He sets a time hook in the first sentence, introduces his MC in the second paragraph, and before you know it, you're already into the fourth paragraph. Within just a handful of seconds, you're already emotionally connected to the main character, so you're curious what's going to happen next. So at the end of one page, you still don't know anything about the book, and you only know a little about the setting...but you know a whole lot about the main character and you want to keep reading. That's exactly how you want your reader to feel at this point.

Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie has a more standard SF opening, requiring more information about setting and background because it takes place in an alien and unfamiliar culture. Leckie makes great use of first person POV to introduce her MC to the reader and set the tone for the story to come, personal and intimate, yet somehow distant at the same time. In this opening, the challenge is to present the unfamiliar to the reader in a way they can grasp intuitively, without having to stop to think. This can be very challenging. But here again, Leckie grabs the reader and sort of drags them forward past all the unfamiliar terms, focusing on one problem, then another, then before you know it, you're into the book.

The Heroes by Joe Abercrombie is set in a medieval fantasy world and is about one battle taking place over a period of days, to capture of hill of little consequence. Abercrombie writes grimdark, a sort of fantasy noir light on wizards and long on swords. Abercrombie opens with an extended introduction to his very colorful viewpoint character who starts off telling a little story in the story. Here again he uses first person, which makes events seem more immediate, more important. Again, after the first page, we've got no idea what's happening, and only a rudimentary understanding of where we are. But we know a lot about the point of view character, just enough to have acquired an emotional attachment. And then Abercrombie throws you straight into a fight.

The trend we're seeing here is to focus on creating an emotional bond between your reader and your main character. This is hooking the reader. Your survival as a writer depends on your ability to do this reliably.