[vaiski]

Quick Ben noted in MoI that Blend has "raw put pure talent, right in her bones, and she doesn't even know it" so obviously not Kiska.

As for the duel, "Only Skinner had come away alive from their clash" - doesn't sound like Skinner had the upper hand to me.
Anyways, regarding whole best swordsman thing, I still hold to Brood's opinion. I'm not saying that he knows, has seen or heard about every swordsman out there but he does have a lot of experience of wars and battles.

[Imperial Historian]

I have to say... after reading the bits in NoK that it is clear that dassem is teh vbets swordsman of them all, and is amazingly cool altogether.

NOW MAJOR SPOILERS, IF YOU ARE EVEN CONISDERING READING THE BOOK DONT READ THIS BIT AS IT MIGHT RUIN ONE OF THE BEST BITS IN THE BOOK FOR YOU

We basically see dassem fighting in seven cities, he and his sword go to remove the last champion of the seven cities cause, sturgen who somehow has the magical blessing which means he is amazingly fast. Dassem and sturgen duel, and during teh fight teh sword and dasseem are cut off from teh rets of the army, and during the fight he is hit by something, its not clear what, though it is suggested that it has somethign to do with the claw, anyway dassem is near mortally wounded, he manages to fend off sturgen, who then procedes to demolish most of the rest of the sword, before being stopped by temper long enough for the rest of the army to reach them. During this time whilst mortally wounded dassem easily manages to fight off all the seven cities veterans save sturgen the champion, which is pretty amazing.

After this dassem is brought back to the alazan camp, and is being "looked after" by surly and the claw. Temper and Ferrule the remaining members of the sword, join dassem in the tent, killing tehre claw gaurds on the way, lasseen leaves the tent and leaves her two top assasins and a few other claws in the tent to assainate temper, ferrule and dassem.

Temper realises that dassem will never succumb to hood, she hates him so much, so attempts to kill him hoping this will rouse him, dassem then knocks tmper out and procedes to kill all the claws in the tent, within a few seconds, which is again damned amazing, and one of teh coolest moments in the book. (Note: we say a couple of claws surrounded by the bodies of a few squads of veteran bridgeburners at one point, and the only reason the bridgeburners seem to have won is because one of them let off a cusser)

After that temper, dassem and ferrule travel off into the west, seperating along the way, dassem goes off to travel the world alone.

The ice warriors are the ice spectres yes.

[vahlar]

Does anyone else think Edgewalker sounds like a Tiste, perhaps an Edur being in shadow and all?

[gyrehead]

I've got a couple of questions now that I read it and then gone back through after reading comments here and parsing through the five series books.

Jenna wanted the Ice to come through because she wanted it to free her, right? But I got the sense that this was a gamble on her part and that the Ice taking hold of the Deadhouse was not a sure "good" thing for her. Was she somehow responsible for the Stormriders attack? Or did she just sense it and hope for the best?

What happened to Ferrule? I have only read the series once and cannot remember if his fate was mentioned.

Do we know who or what is killing the Stormriders? For some odd reason unknown I thought maybe that was where Kellanved and Dancer were before their assault on the Deadhouse.

Is NOK the first in the series that ICE has planned or the bridge to that series with the first book being what he already has written? And has he ever refered to what the series would be called to avoid confusion?!

Overall I enjoyed the book very much, though it lurched a bit in the first half. The second half picked up and moved quite well. Though there were a couple of instances that a good editor could have helped. Some of the duplications in action seen through first Kiska's eyes and then Temper's eyes could have been a little less redundant and still manage to convey the information that each was privy to.

[Abyss]

@Fist Gamet - re: Temper - him not realizing just how good he is was one of the things i loved about that character. The bit towards the end where Kiska watched him take on Possum and another Claw, and then we reread the same scene from his perspective, really made that point.

@Korik - re: patronship - i took patronship to mean a link between the warrior and the power behind him, god or otherwise. Much was made of Surger being a 'patroned champion', and when Temper stood against him, Ferrule later mentioned that people were wondering whether he was hiding a patron.

Re: Talons - i'm pretty sure the Shadow Cult existed before Dancer showed up and took it over. Pralt mentioned that the island belonged to them under the Shadow Moon for one night every hundred years or so, implying a longer existance than the Malazan Empire. My guess is that Dancer took over the cult to secure the link to shadow. He developed the Talons separately, altho apparently with some links. Curiously, some of Surly's Claws apparently joined the Cult, but did not become Talons.

Re: Edgewalker - hmmm.... interesting that some of you thought he was Tiste.

- Abyss, thought he was Jimmy Hoffa.

[fan_83]

Imp HIst: there has been plenty of hints dropped regarding the skill and power of daseemm.. so its not so surprising..
after all hes said to have grown enough in power to rival hood;s and he is teh malazan empire first sword after all... with a mage as powerful as tay and an assasin as good as dancer.. why would you think hes worthy of being called first sword..

but still hes cool...

can;t wait to see if hes traveller

[kaf09]

Just regarding a throwaway comment in HoC, regarding the the relationship of Thyr and Tellan. The Queen of Dreams (T'riss) mentioned something along the lines of Thyr and Tellan being ever aligned (the inference, for mine, was towards Tattersail's postion as the new Imass bonecaster).

[fan_83]

there is the curious fact about the janghut, jhenna

she seems to be the reluctat guardian of deadhouse...and yet she let kellanved, dancer, surly, tay and co to stay in deadhouse without her being mentioned by any of the old guards... weird....

also temper seems to be a very powerful individual and he didn;t injure rood.. like he said the damage he did was equivilant to that of a wasp sting...

and his helmet is a very distinctive one.. I assumed that dancer rescued him due to recognition to the helmet and not the man...

and can we assume that temper has now become the new guardian of deadhouse with lubben ??

also how come the ice scpectres weren;t mentioned in the later books ? were they extinct by then ?? and how did tay know about osserc levle of power ? as he said that something is holding hte main force of the attack back and letting the leftover be handled by obo and argyle... and we know that its kellanved.....

so we can therefore conclude the long running debate of who is more powerful.. rake of tay..

rake = osserc.

osserc >>>>> tay

hmmm

[cauthon]

I've added an ICE article to the wikipedia -- feel free to add to it.

[kaf09]

Just regarding Dassem, it was quite an eye-opener in NoK to learn that he and Skinner of the Avowed has already crossed swords.

A question regarding Kiska's (later) identity - she seemed likely to have a brilliant career ahead of her as Tayschrenn's protege. But I can't think of a likely candidate among the mages and assassins and adepts we've met so far in the Erikson books. The only one who could vaguely fit the bill is Blend, one of the last survivors of the Bridgeburners, but I'm unsatisfied. Am I missing someone or something obvious? Of course it's conceivable that we simply haven't been introduced to Kiska yet as an higher echelon operative of Tayschrenn.