▸ Essay
The Lit Escalates First Law Trilogy: What $200 Actually Buys You
| FILED | AUGUST 9, 2026 |
| SUBJECT | Joe Abercrombie |
| SECTION | Editions |
My box from Lit Escalates showed up this week, which means I’ve now got the special edition First Law trilogy on my desk and about a dozen opinions about it. This was one of the more argued-about book Kickstarters of the last year, and now that I’ve had it in my hands I can tell you what the arguing was actually about, and which parts of it hold up.
Short version: the art is wonderful, the manufacturing is ordinary, and my particular copies arrived with real damage. Mine came to just over $200 with the optional slipcase, shipping, and tax. Whether that’s a good deal depends almost entirely on what you thought you were buying, so let’s go through it piece by piece. If you’d rather watch me handle the books and point at the scratches, the video’s right above.
What $2.1 million bought
The campaign ran on Kickstarter from November 21 to December 21, 2025, and it did numbers. Lit Escalates asked for $420,000 and finished with $2,104,717 from 9,538 backers, which is roughly five times the goal.
The origin story is better than most. Lit Escalates set out to sell signed and personalized Joe Abercrombie books, then discovered that US hardcovers of the First Law were basically extinct, so they teamed up with Orbit and made their own. The company itself started as a Covid-era collaboration between Pierce Brown and the painter Joel Daniel Phillips, selling bandanas for a fundraiser, and it grew into a publisher more or less by accident.
Phillips is the reason to care. He founded Lit Escalates, he painted all of this in oil, and his fine art sits in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian and the Denver Art Museum, among others. He’s also the artist behind the Red Rising special editions and Abercrombie and V.E. Schwab’s The Devils. When people say this edition is beautiful, they’re talking about him.
What’s in the box
Before the books, the extras. There’s a tote bag, which is thin but free and therefore above criticism. There’s a sticker decal reading “you can never have too many knives,” part of the merch suite Kevin Chan designed for the campaign. There’s a bookmark. And there’s a business card with a support contact on it, which turns out to be the single most useful item in the box, for reasons I’ll get to.
You also get a set of tri-fold art prints: the dust jacket paintings for all three books, plus the endpaper art for Before They Are Hanged. The Last Argument of Kings jacket is my favorite of the group, and it’s the one I keep going back to. The The Blade Itself print is the weakest of the four, which is a strange thing to say about a painting I’d happily hang up.
Also in the box is a promotional card for a partnership between Lit Escalates and Curious King. More on that further down, because it matters more than a piece of card stock usually would.
The slipcase
The slipcase was a stretch goal add-on that ran $9 during the campaign. For nine dollars it’s genuinely sturdy, the color is right, and it has one detail I love: backers voted on which quotes got printed on the left and right panels. Two of my picks won, which I’m choosing to take personally in a good way.
It has one real flaw, and it’s a big one. The books are packed in far too tightly. Getting them out is a chore and getting them back in is worse, and I’m fairly sure that’s the direct cause of the scuffing on my case, because the damage sits exactly where Before They Are Hanged slides home. I’d also have liked another few millimeters of clearance so I could put mylar on each book, which is what you’d normally do to protect a jacket like this. As it stands there’s no room for it.
That’s a prototyping miss. Somebody should have shoved these in and out fifty times before signing off. But it’s still a lot of slipcase for nine dollars, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise.
The books themselves
The dust jackets are the best thing here by a distance. Phillips painted full wraparound covers in oil, and the reproduction is excellent. The Blade Itself puts Logen on the front in a scene from the prologue, so it’s safe for newcomers. The other two jackets are closer to spoilers, though I doubt you’d understand what you were looking at without having read the books.
My favorite touch on the whole set is the spines. Each one carries a sword, and the blood on the blade climbs higher from book to book, so the trilogy tells you where you are in the story when the three are shelved together. It’s the kind of detail that costs nothing and makes an edition feel considered.
The jacket stock has a gritty, almost sandpapery finish. It feels great in the hand and it’s easy to grip. It’s also, as I’ll get into, the source of one of my problems.
Under the jackets are blood-red boards with gold foil stamping on the front and spine. It looks terrific right now. I’ve owned enough foil-stamped books to expect it to wear at the corners and along the spine over a few years, and I’d bet on that happening here, but that’s a slow problem rather than a defect.
Inside, every volume gets illustrated endpapers, six more paintings by Phillips across the set. The palette is far more vivid than the First Law reads in my head, where the whole thing runs grey and mud-colored, and I was surprised by how much I liked the contrast. Each book also has a fold-out map of the world. I wish it were in color. You get black and grey.
One genuine oddity: my beat-up mass market paperback of The Blade Itself is roughly the same trim size as this hardcover and feels heavier in the hand. I don’t have a satisfying explanation for that, but it’s a reasonable proxy for the paper conversation we’re about to have.
The three complaints
Every argument I’ve seen about this edition comes down to the same three things.
One: it’s a bookplate, not a signature on the page. A lot of backers wanted Abercrombie’s pen on the actual paper and didn’t get it. What you get is a full-color illuminated bookplate, printed on uncoated cream stock and permanently affixed to the title page. Lit Escalates explained the reasoning openly on the campaign page: personalizing a book turns it into a unique object, and with the publisher in Seattle and Abercrombie in England, plates were the only way to keep each personalization tied to the right order across the whole production run. Abercrombie himself wrote that rather than signing pages, the signatures would go on illustrated plates bespoke to each book. Nobody was misled. It just isn’t what some people pictured. For what it’s worth, the plate is a nice object, and my only real gripe is that the adhesive has bled through and is visible on the reverse of the page. I’m curious how that ages.
Two: the paper. This is standard hardcover stock, not acid-free. The campaign page listed it plainly as “Industry Standard Stocked Groundwood.”
Three: the binding. The pages are glued, not sewn. The campaign page listed this plainly too: “Binding Type: Glued.”
Notice the pattern. Both of the specs people are angriest about were printed on the campaign page before anyone pledged a dollar. That doesn’t make them good specs. It does mean this isn’t a case of a publisher hiding the ball, and I think that distinction matters when you’re deciding how annoyed to be.
How to read a special edition spec sheet
If those two lines didn’t mean much to you when you read them, you’re in the majority, and that’s most of why this campaign turned into an argument. So here’s the short version of what those terms actually buy you, which should be useful the next time any publisher puts a collector’s edition in front of you.
Groundwood versus acid-free. Groundwood pulp keeps the lignin from the tree in the paper. Lignin oxidizes when it meets light and air, which is why old paperbacks go tan at the edges and eventually get brittle enough to crack. Acid-free paper has been processed and buffered to slow that down, and archival-grade stock is built to last centuries rather than decades. Groundwood is normal for trade printing and it’s completely fine for a reading copy. It’s an unusual choice for a book you’re being asked to treat as an heirloom.
Glued versus Smyth sewn. Glued binding, sometimes called perfect binding, means the folded sections get their spine folds ground off and the loose page edges get glued into the cover. Smyth sewing stitches each folded section with thread and then binds the sewn block in, so the pages are held by thread rather than adhesive. Sewn books open flatter, survive rereading better, and don’t shed pages when the glue eventually hardens and cracks. Adhesive is sensitive to heat and cold, which is worth knowing if your shelves sit near a window or a radiator. If this is going to be your reading copy of a trilogy you revisit, sewn is the one you want.
Foil stamping versus inlay. The gold on these boards is foil stamped, which means heat and pressure transfer a thin metallic film onto the cloth. An inlay is a separate piece of material recessed into the board, which is a different and more expensive operation. Stamped foil looks superb new and is the part of a binding most likely to show wear first, because it sits proud of the surface exactly where your hands go.
Where “fine press” starts. Fine press generally means letterpress printing, handmade or mould-made paper, hand binding, often leather, and a stated limitation. This edition is none of those things and never claimed to be. It’s a nicely dressed trade hardcover with excellent art, and if you go in reading it as that, the value proposition looks a lot more reasonable.
The part the spec sheet didn’t warn me about
Here’s my actual complaint, and it isn’t about any of the three above. My copies arrived damaged.
The Before They Are Hanged jacket is the worst of it. That gritty finish I liked so much picks up fingerprints, and worse, it scratches. On the dark areas of the painting the color has come away where the jacket has been scraped, and underneath it is plain white, so the scratches read as bright lines across the art. It isn’t rubbing off, it’s gouged. The bottom edge of that jacket is damaged too. I’ve seen worse examples posted on Facebook and Reddit by other backers, so I got off lightly, but at this price I wanted a clean copy.
Last Argument of Kings is the real casualty. Open the front cover and the endpaper is coming apart under my fingers. The rear endpaper is worse, tearing away from the board outright. That’s not shipping damage or handling damage. That’s a bad book.
The good news is that Lit Escalates is responding to this. In the campaign comments they’re asking affected backers to email photos to kickstarter@lit-escalates.com and arranging replacements, and they’ve said they adjusted their packing method for slipcases after reports of exactly this kind of damage started coming in. That’s the right answer. The catch is timing. As of their late-July update they’d shipped around 4,000 of the 9,538 orders at roughly a thousand a week, with the last packages expected out around the end of August. If your box already went out under the old packing method, the fix arrived behind your parcel.
So: keep the business card. Photograph anything wrong before you shelve it. Email them.
Where Curious King comes in
That promotional card in the box announces a partnership between Lit Escalates and Curious King, the UK fine press run by Anthony Kaye. The two of them collaborated on Pierce Brown’s Red Rising across several tiers, from a machine-bound artist edition up through letterpress numbered and hand-bound leather lettered states.
This is worth knowing because Curious King also produces a First Law edition in numbered and lettered states, and those are the versions that answer every complaint in this review. They’re also nearly impossible to get and priced accordingly. Everything Kaye puts out is stunning, and if the Lit Escalates specs disappointed you, that’s the tier you were actually shopping for. Most of us aren’t getting one.
So, would I back it again?
Yes.
I want to be honest about why, because it isn’t because the objections are wrong. They’re all correct. The paper is ordinary, the binding won’t outlive me, and at two hundred dollars I expected to open the box and find three perfect books, which I didn’t. I also wish there’d been interior art beyond the endpapers, though I understand there were limits on what was possible with a licensed trade text.
But what I actually wanted from this was Joel Daniel Phillips painting the First Law, in a US hardcover that didn’t previously exist, at a price I could justify. That’s what showed up. The jackets are gorgeous, the blood on the spines makes me happy every time I look at the shelf, and I’m not getting my hands on the Curious King editions anytime this decade. These are going to look great, and they’ve made me want to reread the whole trilogy, which is the highest compliment I can pay a set of books.
Just know what you’re buying. That’s the whole lesson of this campaign, and it was printed on the page the entire time.
If you haven’t read the trilogy yet, I’ve got a full episode on the First Law as a whole, plus one on each book: The Blade Itself, Before They Are Hanged, and Last Argument of Kings.
Where to get the books
The Lit Escalates edition was a limited Kickstarter run and isn’t available at retail. If you just want to read the trilogy, the links below are affiliate links to Bookshop.org and Libro.fm, which support independent bookstores and this channel at no extra cost to you.
Steven Pacey narrates the audiobooks, and he’s one of the genuinely great narrators working. If you’re rereading rather than reading cold, that’s the way I’d go.
Or pick up the three-book paperback set:
FAQs
Is the Lit Escalates First Law special edition worth it?
If you’re buying it for Joel Daniel Phillips’s art and for a US hardcover of the trilogy that didn’t otherwise exist, yes. Mine came to just over $200 with the slipcase, shipping, and tax, and I’d back it again. If you’re buying it as an archival or fine press object, no. The paper is groundwood rather than acid-free and the binding is glued rather than sewn, both of which were stated on the campaign page before launch.
Is the Lit Escalates First Law edition actually signed by Joe Abercrombie?
Yes, but on a bookplate rather than the page itself. Signed and signed-and-personalized tiers came with a full-color illuminated bookplate carrying Abercrombie’s signature, printed on uncoated cream stock and permanently affixed to the title page. Lit Escalates chose plates over tip-ins because personalization makes each set unique, and plates let them keep the right personalization attached to the right order with the author and the publisher on different continents. An unsigned tier was also offered.
What paper and binding does the Lit Escalates First Law edition use?
The campaign page listed the paper as “Industry Standard Stocked Groundwood” and the binding as “Glued.” Groundwood contains lignin, so it yellows and grows brittle faster than acid-free stock, and glued binding holds loose page edges with adhesive rather than stitching folded sections with thread. Both are normal for trade hardcovers and below what collectors usually expect at this price.
What is the difference between Smyth sewn and glued binding?
Smyth sewing stitches each folded section of the book with thread and binds the sewn block into the case, so the pages are held mechanically. Glued binding, also called perfect binding, grinds the folds off the sections and glues the loose page edges into the spine. Sewn books open flatter, hold up to rereading, and won’t shed pages when adhesive eventually hardens and cracks. Glue is also more sensitive to heat and cold.
How much did the Lit Escalates First Law Kickstarter raise?
$2,104,717 from 9,538 backers against a $420,000 goal, a little over five times target. The campaign ran from November 21 to December 21, 2025, and Lit Escalates produced the books in partnership with Orbit.
My Lit Escalates books arrived damaged. What do I do?
Photograph the damage and email kickstarter@lit-escalates.com, which is the contact on the business card in your box. They’ve been arranging replacements for affected backers in the campaign comments, and they’ve said they adjusted their slipcase packing method after damage reports came in. Fulfillment has been running at roughly a thousand orders a week, so expect replacements to queue behind the remaining original shipments.
Who is the artist on the Lit Escalates First Law edition?
Joel Daniel Phillips, who is also the founder of Lit Escalates. He painted the wraparound dust jackets in oil and contributed six further paintings for the illustrated endpapers across the three volumes. His fine art is held in permanent collections including the Smithsonian and the Denver Art Museum, and he has also worked on Pierce Brown’s Red Rising editions and on The Devils by Abercrombie and V.E. Schwab.
How does this compare to the Curious King First Law edition?
They’re aiming at different buyers. Curious King, the UK fine press run by Anthony Kaye, produces First Law in numbered and lettered states with letterpress printing and hand binding, which is the tier where archival paper and sewn bindings are standard. Those editions are far more expensive and very hard to obtain. The Lit Escalates edition is a well-dressed trade hardcover with exceptional art at a fraction of the price. Lit Escalates and Curious King have also collaborated, most visibly on Pierce Brown’s Red Rising.
Was the slipcase worth the add-on price?
For the $9 stretch goal price, yes. It’s sturdy, the color suits the set, and backers voted on the quotes printed on the panels. Its one real flaw is that it’s cut too tight, so the books are difficult to remove and harder to replace, there’s no clearance for mylar jackets, and the friction appears to be causing scuffing on both the case and the books.
Sources
- Kickstarter, “The First Law: Signed & Personalized by Joe Abercrombie” by Lit Escalates (funding total, backer count, goal, campaign dates, edition features, the “Industry Standard Stocked Groundwood” and “Glued” specifications, the bookplate rationale and Estate #9 Cream stock, the $9 slipcase stretch goal, add-on list, Orbit partnership, and collaborator biographies)
- Kickstarter campaign Update #23, July 22, 2026 (roughly 4,000 of 9,538 orders shipped, about 1,000 per week, final packages expected around the end of August 2026)
- Lit Escalates replies in the campaign comments, July 2026 (replacement process via kickstarter@lit-escalates.com, and the adjusted slipcase packing method following damage reports)
- Joe Abercrombie, “The First Law Special Hardcover Edition” (his description of the illustrated bookplates in place of signed pages, and of Joel Daniel Phillips’s oil painting process)
- Curious King, Red Rising (the Lit Escalates collaboration and the artist, numbered, lettered, and Roman numeral tiers)
- Condition of the review copies, packaging, and slipcase fit described from the set I bought and filmed.
Transmissions from ground control