I worked my way through the second tales of the Malazan book over the past several weeks. Overall I’m still pleased with this series and enjoying it, though I did find that this book dragged more than the first book. It’s epic fantasy, grim and gritty, with high level magic users vying with gods, mortals ascending to immortality, demons making bargains with powerful sorcerers, ancient undead dragons wreaking havok, and more. My main problem with the series is the daunting number of characters and their names and races – Mappo, Jhag, Caladan Brood, Tayschrenn….more nonsense syllables than you can shake a stick at makes it very tough to keep track of who is who and what is what, and there’s not as much focus on true character development as I would like.

Still in all it’s worth slogging through it to see the awesome confrontations and descriptions of fantasy warfare on an epic scale. Ever imagine riding a ship piloted by headless undead across the planes with an ancient bone dragon chasing you? Wondered how gods are born? It’s all in here.

As a bonus, one of the central characters in the first book, Anomander Rake, reminds me totally of a DnD character Andrew ran back when we were kids. Zolar Kendrayn lives, in spirit anyway.