[kcf]

The Bonehunters by Steven Erikson

The Bonehunters is the sixth and latest volume of Erikson’s anticipated 10-volume series: The Malazan Book of the Fallen. For those not familiar with Erikson’s series, my advice is become familiar with it – in my opinion, it is the best ‘fantasy’ series out there. The books have everything: action, epic battles, gods, magic, demons, beasts, humor, truth, lies, death, destruction, despair, hope… And through it all, Erikson anchors the story in superb characterization of both the powerful and the men and women in the trenches, the expendable.

The story picks up where House of Chains leaves off after Shiak’s rebellion. Pursuing Leoman of the Flails and the remnant of the rebellion, the 14th Army is in bad shape. Can the Bonehunters survive and grow into their name as a showdown typical of Erikson awaits at Y’Ghatan, a place famous for feeding on Malazan blood? Are the handful of veterans and old guard enough, will they survive?

Other threads are in action and approach yet another convergence. Mappo and Icarium suffer a major blow – will Icarium’s wrath be unleashed once more? Apsalar continues in service to the House of Shadow with the skills of a god and a broken heart. Who are her targets, and what role do her new companions have to play? Cutter and company journey to Otataral Island and into ambush. The Master of the Deck reveals his power; the Edur Empire becomes known to the Malazan Empire; Karsa is Karsa.

For me, The Bonehunters began at a crawl as I struggled to recall all the players – a reread of the other books is recommended, as Erikson brings many arcs towards another convergence. There is no repetitive back-story here, however, momentum continues to build and the book became almost impossible to put down.

New revelations occur as our understanding of the world, the rules, and the ‘real fight’ grows. Questions above are answered and left unanswered, new questions, old questions, new and old players in the game, confused, conflicting, hidden motivations abound – Erikson weaves an intricate, yet raw masterpiece.

As I’ve come to expect from Erikson, commentary relative to our own world abounds. Real and perceived inequities, religious and other fanaticism, torture, war and peace – Erikson paints a truly cynical view. Yet, his characters are not without hope; they continue in spite of the apparent pointlessness to it all…I’m more curious than ever to see how Erikson will conclude this epic, tragic tale.

Ultimately, I am still undecided on where The Bonehunters fits in with the rest of the series. Part of me believes it may be the weakest book of the series so far – which still leaves it superior to most SF out there. The humor seems forced at times, especially in the beginning, and not the effortless banter of some of the other books. Another part of me believes that rating these books against one another is an exercise in futility, missing the point.

My fully admitted bias in favor of Erikson makes this book difficult to rate; on my 10-point scale, where 5 is a take-it or leave-it book, and 10 is unsurpassed, I rate The Bonehunters at 7.5-8. Other efforts in the series rate as high as 8.5 or 9, and none below 7.5. While the story somewhat stands alone, The Bonehunters is an installment in a greater work, and it should be treated as such.

So, after my thrillingly exhaustive read of The Bonehunters, I’ll end with but one of my many questions: Steven Erikson, who is your Gumble?


This and other reviews at my blog.

[thrinidir]

Steven Erikson - The Bonehunters

I've been reading this book on and off for almost a month...a lot of the earlier charm of the series is gone, but it's still a damn fine book! If you are interested in my review of the book you can find it here.

Comments are rewarded with a free cookie! No, not really, but I'd appreciate it

[Hokonoso]

find it hard how people can even touch this book and read it in anything over 1 week time. this book is so good that for me it took 3 days to read! But then again these books are long, i could see how one could forget the characters in book 4 by the time i started this one but finding t his book boring or slow is just impossible to me! book 5 started slow but after 100 pages it was fast for the last 830 pages! TBH started fast and only got faster imo.

[Salt-Man Z]

You don't understand how someone could possibly take more than a week to read a 1,000 page novel? :confused:

[Hokonoso]

Salt-Man Z;364681 said:

You don't understand how someone could possibly take more than a week to read a 1,000 page novel? :confused:

*cough* little under 800 pages and it goes by fast!!

i mean as good as these books are i find it hard not to just devour them as fast as possible! I figure by default that if you are reading books like these then you have a very high reading comprehension level as otherwise they would just be too confusing, and with that in mind the books go fast!

[Pkdragon]

Yeah, it's funny. This is probably the longest book in the series that I've read so far, well, at least rivaling MoI, and it nonetheless took me about a week to read it, while some of the other ones took me ages. Slow start, but once the momentum picked up it just kept going, and Chapter 7 honestly reminded me of Memories of Ice. Which is a good thing.

That being said, it was probably one of the weaker books plot-wise simply because there were a lot of characters, a lot of point of views, and it seemed very unfocused for a Malazan book. Also, it was interesting that a lot of the characters at the start of the story sorta just fizzled out, while other unexpected characters came out of nowhere to steal the show. Not necessarily a bad thing, in most cases, because I liked the later characters more anyway... with the exception being Corabb. Right when Corabb became interesting, his plot relevance lessened dramatically. Anyway, I liked it more than House of Chains, at the very least. This one pretty much fixed everything House of Chains did wrong.

[Jude]

Yeah I'm astounded that so many people found this the weakest book. I guess I can see the whole being dissappointed with the seeming unfocus it took to, but I didn't really see that as a bad thing at all. ALOT of shit went down in this book and we found out alot alot about the malaverse. Plus, the plot lines that weren't wrapped up had such an obvious "This is a huge cliffhanger so you better get pumped for the coming books" feel that I couldn't be mad at all. I also found that this was the book where alot of the characters got alot better. Paran, Apsalar, and Fiddler were way better reads, (not that they were bad before) and we got to know the 14th alot better. Even Kalam who has always been an amazing read was at his best at this book. Finally, in my opinion this was, if not the best in the series, the most fun for sure. Y'Ghatan was awesome as was all the running around with the Deragoth and Dejim, and Malaz city and the defending of the first throne. Even Karsa's fight with the Lizard thing was just pure fun. AAANYWAY, that's my take on it. I just don't get how people liked HoC more than this one.

[Salt-Man Z]

Yeah, BH is tied for my 3rd favorite in the series (with GotM).