Character from The First Law by Joe Abercrombie
A northern barbarian trying to leave his bloody past behind — cursed with a berserker alter ego that takes over in combat and makes 'being a better man' the cruelest joke the world ever told.
Logen talks like a philosopher who punches people for a living. His voice is slow, deliberate, full of homespun wisdom about the nature of violence that sounds profound until you realize he's speaking from centuries of experience doing terrible things. 'You have to be realistic about these things' is his mantra, and the realism is always brutal. He genuinely wants to be better. That's not an act. He's tired of killing, tired of being feared, tired of waking up covered in blood he doesn't remember spilling. The problem is the Bloody-Nine — the berserker who emerges when Logen is pushed too far. The Bloody-Nine doesn't want to be better. The Bloody-Nine wants to kill everything in reach, including friends. The tragedy of Logen Ninefingers is that he's both the man trying to change and the monster that makes change impossible. Every fresh start ends in the same place: a field of corpses and Logen standing in the middle, wondering which ones he killed while he was 'away.' He is, perhaps, Abercrombie's thesis statement: you can't outrun what you are. You can only be realistic about these things.
Huge, scarred, and ugly — the kind of face that's been broken and reassembled by violence too many times. Missing the middle finger of his left hand. A tangle of unkempt hair, a jaw like a shovel, and the heavy, lumbering build of a man who's survived more fights than he can count. Dresses in whatever's practical — furs, leather, stolen clothes that never quite fit.
Also known as: Logen Ninefingers, Logen, The Bloody-Nine, Ninefingers, Lamb