Toll the Hounds

[Lenny]

May I start with a picture, just to prove that Amazon.co.uk and I have a deep-rooted relationship going on?



Yes, that's right - I've got it before the publication date! And oh how it has made me happy! Jealous much?

I've not actually started it yet, but the Dramatis Personae, which is three pages long and contains at least three spoilers, and one character whom we all want to know about, is truly amazing.

I was going to have a relaxed evening playing MGS4, maybe go to bed at 10pm because I'm tired, but screw that - I'm going to read until I drop, sleep, wake up, and finish this beastie.

Havig read Night of Knives a few days ago, my appetite for Malazan was brought back to the fore, and I just so happen to be able to sate it today.

See you later, folks!

Oh, and expect spoilers in future posts - don't say I didn't warn you!

[Wiggum]

Damnit.

I love the fact that stateside, not only do we get the book much later, we also get it with a gawd awful cover.

Have fun Lenny!

[Lenny]

I saw the cover when looking on Amazon/com to see if the publication date had been moved forward - it truly is horrific, you poor things. You ought to import it.

[HoopyFrood]

Is it the Tor Books cover you're talking about? Because, gee, they're the ones I collect (because I bought the first three in that cover, and thus must continue!) I don't mind them. The above book is dramatic, yes, but it's just not the Malazan covers I now know and love...

And you are a jammy thing, getting it sent early. Enjoy, Lennis (as I know you will, because the Malazan series is just awesome...)

[Lenny]

Yep - Amazon.com: Toll the Hounds: Book Eight of The Malazan Book of the Fallen: Steven Erikson: Books

It's not published until the 16th of September. And I think the new Bantam Press covers are sleek. I just wish I had a new cover for Midnight Tides.

And yes, I'm the jammiest thing you'll ever meet. I wonder how Rane will react?

[murphy]

Originally Posted by Lenny

I saw the cover when looking on Amazon/com to see if the publication date had been moved forward - it truly is horrific, you poor things. You ought to import it.

I do. But they will be sending it to me along with Return of The Crimson Guards by Esselmount (sp?) sometime in August. I don't like the Tor covers either. In this case I much prefer the UK version. Also, the books are better constructed than here.

However, when it comes to the Jennifer Fallon books, I like the US covers better, also a Tor book.

(Is also green with envy).

[Jason_Taverner]

got mine today as well was very nice surprise

[Lenny]

Did you order from Amazon, out of interest? I wonder if a majority of people in Britain got it yesterday, then?

[Rane Longfox]

200 pages in at the moment (it's in Waterstones stores all over the UK, for anyone that's relevant to)... I believe the phrase is "Slack-jawed in awe" - loving it so far, and so many juicy anticipations looming!!

[HoopyFrood]

I've just realised, after all this time, that I've been inserting a random "of" into the title. Gods know why, and why it's taken me this long to notice that it's not there

[Heffaloo]

Originally Posted by Wiggum

Damnit.

I love the fact that stateside, not only do we get the book much later, we also get it with a gawd awful cover.

Have fun Lenny!

Why not just order it from Amazon.co.uk, then? That's what I did. I'm all the way over here in Oklahoma, and I still got mine last Friday. Sadly, I haven't had the time to start it yet because of school.

[Werthead]

My review of the latest novel in the series.

Another year, another book in Steven Erikson's enormous Malazan Book of the Fallen series. Toll the Hounds is the eighth (of ten) novel in the series, but given that the final two books are one immense story split in half for length, it is also the penultimate chapter of this series.

The continent of Genabackis, two years (or so) after the war between the Pannion Domin and an alliance between the Tiste Andii under Anomander Rake, the mercenary companies under Caladan Brood and a Malazan army under Whiskeyjack and Dujek Onearm. In that war half a dozen major cities and the floating fortress of Moon's Spawn were destroyed, and the final Pannion refuge in the city of Coral was devastated and occupied by the Tiste Andii. The city is now cloaked in endless night and known as Black Coral. The shattered remnants of the Bridgeburners - Mallet, Spindle, Picker, Bluepearl, Blend and Antsy - have settled in Darujhistan to run a bar whilst a shadowy group of mages awaits the long-prophecised coming of a Tyrant who will conquer it. From the west Cutter, once a Daru thief named Crokus, is returning home with a motley crew of adventurers from across the world, whilst in the south of the continent three separate groups of travellers have arrived on missions of their own. In night-shrouded Coral, Anomander Rake broods and his sword, Dragnipur, drinker of souls, becomes restless...

Toll the Hounds takes us back to where the series began in Gardens of the Moon nine years ago, Darujhistan of the blue fires, and it is with a tremendous sense of nostalgia that reader is reunited with many favourite characters from that novel and Memories of Ice, not to mention a few more familiar faces as well (some of whom get spectacular entrances). This time around the novel is not as packed with dizzying revelations and huge battles as the previous three volumes in the series, but rather than take this opportunity to shave off a few hundred pages from the book, Erikson instead takes advantage of this to paint the city of Darujhistan in much greater depth and detail than any other city in the series, moving between numerous 'lesser' POVs among the common folk of the city and events both huge and mundane in their lives. As a result Toll the Hounds is much slower-paced than any other book in the series. To a certain extent this may invite the reader to groan, but Erikson compensates for the lack of incident with deeper characterisation and motivation than ever before.

Toll the Hounds is also the Malazan series' most thematically-developed and tightest novel, with notions of family, responsibility and the role of desire all coming in for examination. Unfortunately, Erikson hasn't lost or scaled back on his tendency to have ordinary commoners spouting out philosophical arguments like Proust, but this late in the day the average reader of this series will be prepared for it. To make up for this Toll the Hounds is the funniest book in the series by some margin and, oddly given his much greater presence in the prose style (Kruppe is recounting the narrative to two other characters, and most chapters in the book open and close with Kruppe's short commentary on the events), the divisive character of Kruppe is kept to the background and only comes to the fore in a few short, memorable scenes.

As usual, events build to a huge finale and whilst the scale of those events is not in the line of the vast battles in Reaper's Gale or Memories of Ice, the significance of these events is much greater, and the stakes are definitely raised higher as the final two volumes of the series approach. Excellent humour and some major deaths and some huge revelations make Toll the Hounds essential reading for fans of the series, and if Erikson fails to overcome his standard faults, at least he doesn't exasperate them or introduce new ones with one notable exception: the timeline, which has been very problematic on occasion, is completely shot to hell in this book with several characters appearing who are much older than they should be.

Toll the Hounds (****) is available now in the UK from Bantam Books. Tor will publish the US edition in September. Ian Cameron Esslemont's second Malazan novel, Return of the Crimson Guard, is published in August in the UK (no US date set as yet), and a review is forthcoming. The ninth novel in the series, Dust of Dreams, should be published in approximately one year's time.

[Lenny]

You've finished it?! Hood damn you (well...)!! I was 100 pages off claiming to be the first Chronite to finish it and everything.

Meh, at least I can claim second (unless another evil being gets there before me!), and we can all claim to have finished it faster than Rane - something I'll be proud of, for my own strange reasons.

Right, I might as well get on with it. See you in an hour.

[Wiggum]

Ewwwww.......Ser Wert's review did not get me too excited for it.

[Lenny]

Reading it will make you excited for it. Fantastically excited for it!

It's truly brilliant. Some of the things that happen are just, well... they're still sinking in, let's put it that way! And what other events mean for the conclusion of the series. Hell, there's one that will rock things to their foundations.

Oh, and I still reckon that the Moon plays an inportant part in the whole series.

And that's all I'll say. Well, for a few days, at least. Seeing as it was officially published in the UK today, it might do to give those who have got it a few days to read before the discussions begin.

EDIT: Oh, can I claim "Second"?