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A review by mgerboc
The Bonehunters by Steven Erikson
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
It's extraordinarily difficult to review Malazan Book of the Fallen books due to their breadth and depth of theme, character, and plot. With that being said, The Bonehunters is my favorite Malazan books so far, for two main reasons - 1. Clarity of plot - while I believe this is the longest Malazan book I've read so far at 1201 pages, it was a real page turner. And although there are a million things going on, the flow from one plot to another was near perfect and the way in which this plot starts tying together plots from previous MBotF is extremely gratifying. The suspense and tension that Erikson is able to build here is almost unbearable at times, and I believe the siege of Y'Ghatan, a 155-page chapter focusing on action (which is arguably my least favorite part of any fantasy story), might just be the crowning achievement in this series when it comes to pacing and suspense.
Reason 2. This was the first time while reading Malazan that I felt like a competent reader. Malazan is really deep, tough reading which subverts expectations and is so unique and exists in such an enormous universe that even while enjoying the story, it's often difficult to know what the fuck is happening (at least for me) - it is this mystery that turns some people off but which has sucked me in pretty obsessively and entirely. Book 6 of 10, The Bonehunters, is where this finally starts paying off (again in my experience). I generally knew who the characters were, I caught references to previous events and even spotted some foreshadowing. This isn't to say I picked up everything - the meeting between Shadowthrone and Tayschrenn at the end for example - but for the first time in this series I felt confident that I knew what I was reading about, and it was so satisfying.
Thematically, like all Malazan books, is where The Bonehunters shines brightest - the nature of empire, Fiddler's inner monologue about how the same people suffer during wartime and peacetime and therefore the binary of the two concepts is a false one, the importance of propaganda and historical authority, the emptiness of zealotry, and so man more. But what made this different from previous Malazan books was also the character work - for the first time in the series, almost all of the characters who appear have already been introduced, so you have a sense of who they are and what motivates them, and Bonehunters also allows us to finally expand of some of the more mysterious characters like Tavore while developing more unique voices for the myriad soldiers we've been following in Seven Cities.
Anyway, I'm sure I'll have a million more thoughts about this, but in the meantime, I'm going to watch some of AP Canavan, Iskar Jarak, Philip Chase, and Andy Smith's EXCELLENT videos on Youtube on this series.
Reason 2. This was the first time while reading Malazan that I felt like a competent reader. Malazan is really deep, tough reading which subverts expectations and is so unique and exists in such an enormous universe that even while enjoying the story, it's often difficult to know what the fuck is happening (at least for me) - it is this mystery that turns some people off but which has sucked me in pretty obsessively and entirely. Book 6 of 10, The Bonehunters, is where this finally starts paying off (again in my experience). I generally knew who the characters were, I caught references to previous events and even spotted some foreshadowing. This isn't to say I picked up everything - the meeting between Shadowthrone and Tayschrenn at the end for example - but for the first time in this series I felt confident that I knew what I was reading about, and it was so satisfying.
Thematically, like all Malazan books, is where The Bonehunters shines brightest - the nature of empire, Fiddler's inner monologue about how the same people suffer during wartime and peacetime and therefore the binary of the two concepts is a false one, the importance of propaganda and historical authority, the emptiness of zealotry, and so man more. But what made this different from previous Malazan books was also the character work - for the first time in the series, almost all of the characters who appear have already been introduced, so you have a sense of who they are and what motivates them, and Bonehunters also allows us to finally expand of some of the more mysterious characters like Tavore while developing more unique voices for the myriad soldiers we've been following in Seven Cities.
Anyway, I'm sure I'll have a million more thoughts about this, but in the meantime, I'm going to watch some of AP Canavan, Iskar Jarak, Philip Chase, and Andy Smith's EXCELLENT videos on Youtube on this series.