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A review by whatthefunct
Assail by Ian C. Esslemont
3.0
While Assail had an extraordinarily promising premise, for me, it failed to ever meet the bar that it established early on regarding the stakes and importance of what was happening on the seemingly-cursed continent.
Wanting to avoid spoilers, I'll speak at a very high level about the major POVs in the book and what I did or did not like about them.
I'll start with what I liked. For me, the compelling parts of this book are (understandably, I think) the perspectives of Shimmer, Kyle, Fisher, and Silverfox. If the entire book had been focused 100% on the Imass and the Icebloods, and the larger conflict there which the Crimson Guard was driven to Assail to discover more about, then I'd have loved it.
However, I felt that the inclusion of the gold strike/rush/whatever was unnecessary. The themes it allowed Esslemont to explore, of colonialism and expansionism - of imperialism, really - were already present without the additional cast of characters, and I never felt that any of them contributed anything at all to the plot that we didn't already have through another perspective mentioned above. In fact, so often in this book we end up retreading the same locations (just with a little time having passed between each time we see the locale in question) that it made me wonder why they were there at all. Couple that with the fact that the ending felt almost awkwardly rushed with how quickly things played out - the last chapter is literally 17 pages long, and we have not had the major confrontation yet when that chapter begins, so this should give you an idea - I was just left a little disappointed with the plot structure of the book, especially since it closes out this entire saga in the world of Malaz.
Now, despite the above being fairly critical, I do want to say that overall I still enjoyed the book, and it had some phenomenal moments. Had the metaphorical "fat" been trimmed, we could have had a truly incredible entry here. But the book really only needed to be about 400 pages unless Esslemont decided to expand the ending and make it (and I think he should have, frankly) suitably epic. Still. We have our answers to many of the questions posed way back in Return of the Crimson Guard, and despite not enjoying *how* it happened, I do enjoy the symbolism of how the book ended.
I am always glad to have more Malazan to dive into, and even though I have now finished both the Book of the Fallen and the Novels of the Malazan Empire, I still have more. The Tales of Bauchelain and Corbel Broach, Witness, Path to Ascendancy, and Kharkanas are all waiting for me. And I'll be getting to those in very short order, because this world has its claws in me, and I can't imagine that that will ever not be the case.
Wanting to avoid spoilers, I'll speak at a very high level about the major POVs in the book and what I did or did not like about them.
I'll start with what I liked. For me, the compelling parts of this book are (understandably, I think) the perspectives of Shimmer, Kyle, Fisher, and Silverfox. If the entire book had been focused 100% on the Imass and the Icebloods, and the larger conflict there which the Crimson Guard was driven to Assail to discover more about, then I'd have loved it.
However, I felt that the inclusion of the gold strike/rush/whatever was unnecessary. The themes it allowed Esslemont to explore, of colonialism and expansionism - of imperialism, really - were already present without the additional cast of characters, and I never felt that any of them contributed anything at all to the plot that we didn't already have through another perspective mentioned above. In fact, so often in this book we end up retreading the same locations (just with a little time having passed between each time we see the locale in question) that it made me wonder why they were there at all. Couple that with the fact that the ending felt almost awkwardly rushed with how quickly things played out - the last chapter is literally 17 pages long, and we have not had the major confrontation yet when that chapter begins, so this should give you an idea - I was just left a little disappointed with the plot structure of the book, especially since it closes out this entire saga in the world of Malaz.
Now, despite the above being fairly critical, I do want to say that overall I still enjoyed the book, and it had some phenomenal moments. Had the metaphorical "fat" been trimmed, we could have had a truly incredible entry here. But the book really only needed to be about 400 pages unless Esslemont decided to expand the ending and make it (and I think he should have, frankly) suitably epic. Still. We have our answers to many of the questions posed way back in Return of the Crimson Guard, and despite not enjoying *how* it happened, I do enjoy the symbolism of how the book ended.
I am always glad to have more Malazan to dive into, and even though I have now finished both the Book of the Fallen and the Novels of the Malazan Empire, I still have more. The Tales of Bauchelain and Corbel Broach, Witness, Path to Ascendancy, and Kharkanas are all waiting for me. And I'll be getting to those in very short order, because this world has its claws in me, and I can't imagine that that will ever not be the case.