Then there are the themes in the book. Everything needed for a perfect dish of dark, grim fantasy is here. Magic? Check. Betrayal? Aplenty. Violence? You can literally hear the screams of dying men. A flawed hero? There's more than one flawed hero here.
It's a testament to the writer's storytelling and plot-twisting skills that he's able to get his characters into so much trouble and then get them out, all without giving his readers the impression that he's being overly partial.
The fighting is hats off, badass! The descriptions of sex are just as vivid as the gruesome literary pictures of broken skulls, disemboweled soldiers, hamstrung men and women, and decapitated men lying in pools of blood and gore.
The world-building is beyond average; it’s awesome. Will Wight literally has a different world-building because each book is set in a different location.
Despite the Malazans being soldiers and all, they are still compassionate. It reminds me of what they did in Capustan. I was scared that the marines here would be a rip-off of the others, but I was wrong.
The world is amazing. For a small book, the author cleverly does a lot of rather unique world-building. It's not vast Midkemia, truth be told. This one is more straightforward, more streamlined, very different.
Meanwhile, Aes Sedai plotting thickens, serving as a perfect backdrop to the eventual facing off of The Dragon Reborn Rand al'Thor and the Forsaken Sammael.
De Castell writes a New Fantasy, a world in which his characters can be whatever they want to be regardless of whatever and whoever stands in their way
