The world of the First Law careers into a dangerous new age. An age of money and machines, of pollution and corruption, of huge inequality and vast opportunity. An age…of madness.

A Little Hatred features an irreverent attitude to the staples of fantasy, crunching action, merciless twists, a tight focus on vivid characters and a rich vein of dark humour—seen through the lens of an industrial revolution.

Many faces familiar from previous books lurk in the background, still pulling strings, hatching schemes and slitting throats thirty years on, but A Little Hatred focusses on a new generation of characters as they struggle to win renown, settle scores, claw their way to the summit of the slag-heap of society, or simply survive.

Savine dan Glokta—daughter of the most feared man in the Union—has spun a web of favours, partnerships and blackmail and made herself one of the richest and most envied entrepreneurs in Adua. Her secret lover, Crown Prince Orso, crippled by expectation and the frustrations of a corrupt politics, struggles manfully to get out of bed. Leo dan Brock, the impetuous hero that men call the Young Lion, will finally get the opportunity he craves to win glory on the battlefield. Rikke thought herself cursed with fits, but as war comes to the North again she finds she might be blessed with the Long Eye—a vestige of magic in a world ever more dominated by the machine.

The fates of all four will become hopelessly entangled as fortunes rise, empires fall, and revolution threatens to turn the world upside down…