Glen Cook

Somewhere between 3 and 4 stars, but rounded up.

So this is the spiritual/genre predecessor to Malazan, apparently. And I totally see that. Actually, the first book of the Malazan decalogy owes a tremendous amount to this. I'd have to reread it (Ha! Not going to happen anytime soon!), but I feel like that was *very* directly inspired by this in style and voice.

This is much better, in my thinking. An engaging world! Action! Characters! Less than 1100 pages long! Significantly less!

I want to read some of the other books in this series because it got me hooked, but I also burn out of this genre fast, so I will hold off/toss that on the "someday" pile. (While the "we took this commission, so we're finishing it, even if we all think it is serving 'evil,' but what can we do, the other side is 'evil' too, we're just a band of brothers, and we're pretty ugly ourselves, too, if you look even a little close..." thing works for some, and others claim it is 'more realistic', I find the whole thing a little bit trite.)… (more)