Night of Knives A Novel of the Malazan Empire

Having just finished the MBOTF by Erikson this was a bit of a let down. It's possible that the audio book that I listened to was a poor narration and may have influenced me but in general he is a weaker writer even comparing his book 1 this versus gardens of the moon. Hopefully the next 5 in the series will prove better as his writing ability I am sure will improve with practice. The good part was learning more about Dessem and the Sword.

I had no expectations (seems to be a trend for me these days) from this installment of the Malazan series as it was the first ICE book I read and there are mixed reviews among my friends with 3 stars being the most common rating, but I really liked it. No, it's not on the same epic scale as the main series, but it's not supposed to be. Temper was a character who took awhile to grow on me, but I enjoyed his story and it was it interesting to see two vastly different POVs as he is an old veteran and Kiska is a young...well, she's Kiska. Kiska had a fantastic story. Right from the beginning, meddling in the Warren of Shadow, I knew she would just be sticking her nose everywhere she shouldn't. Of course, she just had to get herself involved with (view spoiler)[Tayschrenn, Surly, Dancer and Kellanved (hide spoiler)]. Artan's identity wasn't all too surprising along with most of the plot reveals, but the action was well-paced and it was refreshing to have a major Malazan story in such a compact book. The two POVs (with the occasional POV from the fisherman) was a format that was well suited to the story and set Esslemont apart from Erikson as an author writing in the same universe. As a note, it should be said that I am fascinated by the backstory of the Malazan throne and the Shadowthrone. Seeing the history of such a well-developed world from a different perspective was just so cool and like I always say after reading something Malazan: I didn't believe this world could get bigger, but it just did.