Shane

Greatest books of all time.

This series is truly epic. Karsa Orlong has to be one of the most enthralling characters to read about and Erikson dedicating the first part of this book to his POV was a great introduction.

The ending is steeped in tragedy and the build up to it is a massive convergence (sick of seeing this word yet?) of characters.

Read this after Midnight Tides from the Book of the Fallen series.

TL;DR I think it's a great book, like most Malazan books I've read, it starts a bit slow, but once it gets going it's hard to stop.

For tie ins to BotF: It explains a good bit about Kellanved, Dancer and Dassem and what happened that night described in the prologue of Gardens of the Moon. This was really enjoyable to actually see the characters that are basically legendary names only in the other series.

I wasn't originally planning on interleaving the two series together, but I feel like I got a lot more out of this being fresh from Midnight Tides since that book specifically lifts the veil on some warren stuff, which translates nicely in this book in my opinion.

There are two major POVs in the book, Temper and Kiska. I like the way Temper and Kiska are the complete opposite thematically. Temper being a grizzled vet on Malaz island keeping guard. While Kiska dreams of leaving the island for adventure. There's more to both of them than that of course, Temper especially has a very interesting history and I feel like you share his emotion when you find out certain things within the book, so that's really cool too.

Looking forward to the next one.

A quick read aimed at younger readers. Written in a more classic fantasy style. Not a lore nerd for asoiaf so I'm probably not getting who the factions at war really are since the POV is tightly bound to a farming family who are just experiencing it from the outside.