Night of Knives,
by Ian C. Esslemont.

2005.
Bantam Press.
282 pages, hardcover edition.

Even though I enjoyed the book, and ripped through it faster than I have ripped through anything since I had a severe cold about two months ago, I am not sure if I see Esslemont as an independent author. Sure, he is the co-creator of the brilliant Malazan Universe. Sure, he writes excellent action-based fantasy. But I still can’t rid myself of the feeling that I’m reading this primarily as a add-on to Erikson’s series.

However, once Esslemont has published a few books, and if they are as good as this one, I’ll probably come around to seeing him in a different light.

Be that as it may (i.e. completely irrelevant). No matter if I only see the book as an auxilliary to the Malazan series, I still thought it was quite good. It had some interesting characters, there were new insights into the world of Malaz (especially the stuff about Kellanved and Dancer’s Ascenscion, and the first battle of Y’Ghatan), it was passingly funny, the action was cool and exciting, and so on and so forth. It didn’t have the depth of an Erikson novel, of course, but it wasn’t expected to, either. Nor was it as fun as Erikson, and nor did it have anything even resembling his usual emotional kicks in ths gut, but even Erikson needed most of a 600+ pages long novel to find his stride.

7.0/10.

Almost wanna add half a point to that score, just because it reminded me how awfully great the Malazan world (as well as Erikson’s series) is, that it’s almost three years since I read Gardens of the Moon, and that I really want to re-read this series. :|