”Reaper’s Gale”
by Steven Erikson.

Bantham TPB, 2007. 910 s.

It’s been three years since the Edur conquest of the Letherii Empire, and one year since the outlawing of Adjunct Tavore, the Bonehunters, and the rest of her army.

“Reaper’s Gale” has the same basic structure as all the other “Malazan” books. It starts out kinda slow, with a lot of different groups and individuals spread out across the world. These groups and individuals have different goals, most of which are seemingly relatively unconnected, even if there are signs of some links between them. During this initial stage Erikson also establishes the characters. Here lies one of the strongest points in “Malazan”: Practically every POV character has a sympathetic trait or five (except the obvious ones, of course, like the chief of the secret police in Letheras — and even these unsympathetic ones are solid creations), and when Erikson then proceeds to set up conflicts in which at least some of these sympathetic characters are guaranteed to end up fighting and killing each other. This creates some rather excruciating dilemmas for me as a reader, as for example in the case of the Letherii war against the Awl. Here, I sympathise with the cause of the Awl, but the Awl leaders are so unsympathetic — I never warmed to Redmask, and the young ones weren’t very prominent — whereas their Letherii counterparts were quite likeable. That it ended the way it did, with a third favoured part entering the conflict, was, well, the cause of both relief and grief.

And there I anticipated events a bit. For while the Awl-Lethas conflict was obvious, it is none the less an example of how Erikson’s stories gain momentum by the page, until they become a veritable Juggernaut, headed for a climax of dimensions. In “Bonehunters”, there was the insane clash at Malaz City, in “Reaper’s Gale” there was an even huger one. Malazan marines and an army of regular troops, at least one Letherii army, one Edur army, Karsa Orlong, Icarium, Quick Ben, Rhulad Sengar, Silchas Ruin, the Sisters, Hedge, and just about anyone else you can think of. It also had some utterly devastating character deaths, giving the otherwise awesome ending a bit of a bittersweet feel.

The characters themselves were also pretty standard Erikson fare. Witty, eccentric and fun, or tragic, stalwart and strong, or petty, cruel and cunning — or some other combination of these. Erikson’s enormous character gallery makes it hard to track much depth or development in most of them, but the ones given enough space can be formidable. Undinaas, Seren Pedac, Trull Sengar, Tehol Beddict, Fiddler and Quick Ben are some of the most notable in this respect.

Overall a great book, possibly the third best so far, but still a couple of lengths behind “Memories of Ice” and “Deadhouse Gates”, mainly because as emotional impacts go, this one was far from a Chain of Dogs or a Black Coral.

A scary thought, though, is that the perhaps best moment in all the book — beyond the one where Twilight discover the Malazans — was the silliest one, too: The Ken’ryllah (or however it’s spelled) demon princes turned farmers. You don’t get stuff like that many places. =D

(A final note: I’ve seen some reviews that have voiced criticism at Erikson’s tendency to have even the lowliest peasant come up with the keenest insight, or something like that. Personally, I’m not bothered by this. Like R. Scott Bakker said through his Conditioned in “The Prince of Nothing”, the world has as many centres as it has men, implying that every man thinks himself a philosopher, as well. So I don’t really see a problem in farmers and torturers and soldiers thinking about the way they perceive the world, no matter how they phrase it — in fact, I think it kinda adds a bit more depth to them, making a bit harder to see them get killed — as they invariably are. :P )

EDIT: Beeeeeeeeak! ;_;