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Title: Reaper's Gale
Series:
Malazan Book of the Fallen #7
Author: Steven
Erikson
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre:
Fantasy
Pages: 940
Format: Digital
Edition
The Edur/Letheri
Empire continues to totter on. Rhulad Sengar, instrument of the
Broken God, continues to fight against various champions and
continues to die and be resurrected. He is cut off from his Edur
family and allies by the Letheri beauracracy and it is really the
Prime Minister who is running things.
The champions.
Karsa Orlong has a plan and he can't let Icarium get in his way. But
after a confrontation in the streets, he realizes that Icarium has
his own plans which do not involve fighting with the Emperor. Icarium
unleashes an instrument of magic but something goes wrong and we
don't know if he survives the magical conflagration or not. Karsa
faces Rhulad, treats like the boy he is, takes the magical sword and
with the help of all the spirits chained to him, forces a path to
where the Broken God resides. Instead of killing the Broken God, he
simply rejects him and has the blacksmith who made the cursed sword
destroy it, along with all the power invested in it by the Broken
God.
Gnoll, the Prime
Minister, has setup a secret police, the Patriotists. Their end goal
is to destroy the Edur, take wealth for themselves and become the
rulers in the shadow. Much like any secret police, they end up going
to far and with all the other events going, the populace rises up and
kills most of them.
Tehol Beddict, with
the aide of his manservant Bugg who is the elder god Mael in
disguise, continues his economic war against his own people. His goal
is to bring down the whole economic system so as to bring about
something different that can last. Successful in the end, Tehol
becomes the new Emperor.
The Awl, tribal
plainsmen, are the latest people under seige by the Letheri. With the
arrival of a prophesied leader, Red Mask, who is guarded by two
K'Chain Ch'malle, the Awl have a chance of not only surviving but of
destroying the Letheri army sent after them. It turns out that the
Greyshields were allies of the Awl against the Letheri but the Awl
betrayed them and left them to die on the battlefield earlier.
Redmask fails and his “guardians” turn on him and kill him for
said failure. In his death it is revealed that he was an outcast
Letheri and was simply using the Awl to get revenge on Lether. A
handful of Awl children survive and are taken underwing by the newly
arrived Barghast army which destroys the Letheri army. The two
Ch'malle return to their matron, their reasons still a secret.
The Malazans, the
outcast Bonehunter army, land on the shores of Lether and begin an
invasion. Adjunct Tavore is as silent as ever and nobody in the army
knows what is going on. Fiddler speculates that she is simply going
after the Broken God and not just Lether. The Malazans split up and
fight their way to the capital, only to find it already in chaos due
to the Patriotists, Karsa Orlong's killing of the Emperor, Icarium's
machine gone wrong and Tehol Beddict's plans. They put Tehol on the
throne and are set to go elsewhere, whereever Tavore decides.
There is yet
another storyline dealing with a disparate group of Tiste Andii,
Letheri slaves, Tiste Edur, Imass, Eleint dragons and the birth of a
new Azath House. Dealing with betrayals from long ago, it has no
direct impact on the overall storyline in this book and as such, I'm
not typing up the details. This “summary” is already longer than
most of my whole reviews.
My “review” from 2010 is a good 1 paragraph sum up of the book.
Obviously, as shown by my summary above, there is a bloody lot more
to this book.
While I enjoyed the storyline immensely, I have to admit that
Erikson's philosophy once again ruined what could have been a 5star
book. Pages upon pages of selfish mutterings and hopeless thoughts
and the dwelling upon of pain and hurt real and imagined, past and
future. My main problem is that Erikson is great at pointing out
flaws, in people, in situations, in institutions, in laws but then he
doesn't have his characters propose any solutions beyond “I will
Endure”. He spends a section using his characters to talk about how
the whole of existance itself was nothing but a betrayal by forces of
chaos conspiring against each other. If Erikson thinks even half of
what he writes, how does the man get out of bed each morning? He
writes the true Existential Existance. It is pointless. That is
depressing and it really brought home to me how much Hope I have
being a Christian. Thank God.
With so much going on, I had to simply sit back, enjoy each section
as it was presented to me and not try to put it all together. Even
though this is book 7 in the series, Erikson is still just giving us
pieces of an overall puzzle that has a lot of missing pieces. Erikson
knows the whole picture but is only giving the readers some of the
pieces of the puzzle and forcing us to figure out what the whole
might look like from the little we do know. Forcing each reader to
become a literary archeologist or to give up the series in disgust.
Now, with all of that out of the way...
I still liked this a lot. When the various plots were rolling along,
I couldn't put this book down. The Malazan storyline didn't start
until past the halfway mark and I kept waiting for them to be
included which I think took my attention away from earlier parts of
the book. There was a Segulah woman as a champion but she never
fought Rhulad. She escaped, which kind of disappointed me, as I
wanted to see how she would have fared against the Emperor. Karsa was
just an obnoxious twit the entire time and it was obvious that Rhulad
couldn't defeat him.
The whole Awl storyline almost more about the mystery of the K'Chain
Ch'malle than anything else. For a species supposedly extinct for a
million years, they're surprisingly active. So where have they been
hiding out? I also wondered who Redmask actually was. I'm sure there
are two sentences in one of the earlier books that explains it but I
suspect I'll just go on the Malazan Wiki and find out. Why do all the
hardwork when someone else has already done it?
Aaaaaand I just looked. No other references to Redmask. Just one of
those loose puzzle pieces that Erikson likes to scatter about.
While the storylines are interesting and engaging, there is almost no
point in saying “this was a good part” because somebody dies in
every “good part”. Hence the name of the series. And yet I still
read this series for a second time. Not sure if that means that
Erikson is actually a really good writer or that I'm just a sick
reader who needs help.
This was the last book in the series that I rated highly when I read
them initially. I have a feeling that the next 3 will be just as bad
the second time around. I am girding up my loins for that.
★★★★☆
