Fall of Light

This book is so very excellent if you have read the main storyline before. Even though this is a prequel, it benefits from having read the later books first, because it provides so many "wait, he's THAT GUY?"-reveals that are just great every single time.

While I was slightly underwhelmed by the finale, the whole of the book is an easy five stars for the number of epic reveals alone. The worst thing about the book is that the third book in the series is so far away that I will likely have forgotten most of the characters by the time it comes around. :(

Its a great book. I will not say it is Erikson's best, but it is definitely a great book. Actually I am having some trouble comparing these books to the original ten. Since the Kharkanas books are written in a different narrative register, it often feels odd to see a familiar SE trope and then see it turn out differently.

Overall I would say there is a more meta feel to this book as SE infodumps a lot.. which again is unusual, but also the way he slides in references to MBotF feels like he is having a lot of fun doing it.

So this book...

I would say it has many extremely strong portions - Jaghut, Thel Akai, Dragon, Denier etc

The Liosan portions were a bit boring to be honest.

But then in the last part of the book I found a comment about show more Tiste navel gazing which made me realize the philosophical bloat was intentional and just SE having fun show less

I was disappointed by this after reading almost all the other Malazan books. The richly conceived worlds and multiple twisting plot lines are still there to appreciate. However, the characters are constantly musing, philosophizing and speechifying. At times it seems like William Shakespeare has taken over Erikson's writing. The way the final battle was written left me unfulfilled. I hope that Erikson can get back to stories like the Malazan series.