Book Review: Assail by Ian C Esslemont

Look at it! It's so awesome!

Hopefully I was not alone in my giddy excitement when I saw the title of this book.

Assail.

All Malazan fans will know the weight that sits on that continent. Throughout Erikson’s series we have seen some of the toughest characters be chewed up and spat out by Assail. And sometimes they even survive.

We enter the world of Malazan once again as we always do, with some new characters and some old faces, and I think by now with 15 books under most readers’ belts (I’m going to assume that you’ve read Esslemont’s series after you read Erikson’s) we have enough context that we are immediately drawn into the new stories. A young man from one of the tribes on Assail and a sea-captain on his way to the fabled continent are a couple.

Esslemont does a wonderful job of building tension and suspense in the first portion of the book. We are only given fleeting glimpses into what lies at the heart of the continent and what terrible things might happen. Further to this we are thrown a complete curve-ball with the prologue and only left with burning questions.

Esslemont builds on this consistently throughout the entire book and we are given hints, both great and small, about what is happening and important revelations about the world. I could barely put the book down in the first half for all of these hints and questions (I almost missed my stop a couple of times on the train) and then by the time the second half of the book comes around you’re caught up with the momentous plot you can’t put it down then either!

I will say that for some reason around Chapter Six there was this weird explosion of adverbs. As though Esslemont realised that adverbs can be okay sometimes and got a little carried away. It was a little off-putting once I realised he wasn’t doing it deliberately with one character to try and make a statement about their POV, but then after that chapter it dies down and all is well with the world.

Apart from the ‘Adverb Attack of Ch. 6’ Esslemont’s language is diverse and descriptive, and I did note at times how wonderfully creepy he could be (in all the right places). Esslemont’s voice really shines and I think that he has developed wonderfully since ‘The Night of Knives’ way back in 2004. He gives the proper weight and sadness to those characters and scenes that need it but is also a dab hand at cracking jokes. There was a wonderful moment in a climactic fight scene towards the end that did give me a mighty chuckle.

The Epilogue does a wonderful job of tying everything together in a neat little bow. I did wonder whether it was necessary and should have been a final chapter, but perhaps that’s just pedantic of me? Regardless, the Epilogue ties all of the threads of this book together and then shows us some of the paths the characters want to take next. So instead of leaving us with the unanswered questions that we were sometimes left with in Erikson’s work, Esslemont ties everything together and then scatters the seeds for the next round of storytelling. And each and every single one of those seeds should be an epic story in its own right.

By the time we reach the end of the book the world has been suitably threatened, our view on it has been suitably rocked, and we have had our hearts suitably broken. All in all, Esslemont continues to build and improve on his previous work. Every volume increases in complexity, skill, and epic scale.

I absolutely urge any fantasy fan to read the Malazan series, and if any Malazan fans are hesitant to pick up Esslemont’s series after what a good job Erikson did, I can assure you that you will not be disappointed. Esslemont has at least 3 more books to go and I for one cannot wait to read them. 


Assail is released on the 14th August and you can preorder it in hardback or ebook from Amazon, or from the publisher's website.

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Review: Orb Sceptre Throne - Novel of the Malazan Empire

 
Well I think you can understand now why the gap in blog posts, eh? It was because I was reading through a Malazan book.

So, fair warning, if you haven't read any of Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen series or Ian C. Esslemont's books which don the subtitle 'A Novel of the Malazan Empire' on each cover then I suspect this is all going to sound like gibberish to you.

This time I'm working my way through the Ian C Esslemont series Novels of the Malazan Empire which is obviously set in the same world and deals with largely new ground. And this review might seem a bit sparse on the details but then again, if I reveal too much I actually have the potential to ruin two whole separate epic fantasy series... so we'll see how it goes.

And which book, I hear you ask? (that was creepy, how did you do that?) Well, Orb Sceptre Throne, book number four in Esslemont's series. And if you don't like Amazon links, well then here's a link to the publisher's website.

Some of the characters we know and love appear in this book, set as it is in Darijhustan, so we see Kruppe, Rallick Nom makes an appearance among others. In terms of the timeline for this book it's sits neatly after Erikson's Toll the Hounds but also before the finale of his series.

One of the things I am supremely enjoying about Esslemont's works of the Malazan world is that he is exploring all the things that Erikson never had the time to (I rather suspect this was divided neatly by the two of them before either started writing). In this book alone we learn more about the Seguleh, the Moranth and the interesting history of Darijhustan. Now if that's not enough on its own to make you read this then I don't know what will be! But I'll keep going nonetheless.

Of all of Esslemont's books that I have read so far, this one has felt far and away the best of them. I'm not sure if it was the plot, the pacing, the characters or the writing alone that made it feel like that but I suspect it was rather the collection of all of them.

Rather than starting the book in the typical Malazan fashion which is to say plopped down and left to figure out who's who, rather like a party-goer who decided to use the skylight instead of the door, we already know most of the players here. Or at least if not the players then where the players come from which gives us much needed context.

Granted, a lot of that context comes from Erikson's books, but it still felt nice to dive straight into this and look at the echoes of events from Toll the Hounds and before. So I think you would definitely need to have read up to there with Erikson's books before you have a go at this one, some of the characters are the same and you definitely do not want to spoil the events of Toll the Hounds! So I would say, as a standalone work, that is probably this book's only downfall (if it can be called that!)

Enough time has passed and the scenery has so changed that there is an aura of mystery about the place and we're not sure why that scholar is digging around in the wells outside the city, or what he found down there, but I know darn well that it's not going to end well.

Esslemont weaves together all the strands of the story and pushes all the characters together from far flung islands to the glowing blue city in a wonderful manner.Towards the end of the novel the pacing is swift as all of the storylines begin to come to a head and you will find it hard to put down. When you reach the final 100 pages or so, it just becomes really hard to stop reading, one thing comes after another like an avalanche.

Overall I very much enjoyed this novel. There were times when I did pause to appreciate a well crafted metaphor or simile and other times when I was swearing under my breath purely to get the excitement of the events out of my system somehow (hopefully my commuter companions didn't mind). There was always something going on, never a dull moment, and Esslemont definitely met the high bar of scale, colour, and soul-shattering twists and revelations that Erikson has set.

If you weren't as enamored with any previous Esslemont books and were worried where he would take the series, I say to you; Worry no more! He has created a wonderful epic with this novel and once you have devoured this (disclaimer: please don't eat your books it will not make you gain the power contained within their yummy pages) you won't be able to wait for the next volume! And, what luck, you don't have to!

But in all seriousness, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. And if you are a Malazan fan who has reached Toll the Hounds, or finished the Book of the Fallen, then I urge you to read up to this volume, it will sate your undying curiosity for the Malazan world, but still leave you wanting more.


I am sorry I couldn't say any more about the meat and bones of the book, but in defence of my reticence I've already been told off by my friends for giving spoilers...

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