From Amazon.co.uk
The third tale from the Mazalan Book of the Fallen,
Memories of Ice is a convoluted military fantasy even more dense than its two predecessors. A deranged and not necessarily human prophet has set a cannibal rabble to conquer a continent, and various armies and wizards are out to stop him--but their reasons for doing this are many, various and often conflicting. The previous two books
Gardens of the Moon and
Deadhouse Gates were full of mysteries, some of them answered here--Erikson's is a world in which gods ascend from humanity to replace gods that fall or are overthrown and in which the world and the supernatural warrants that surround it are full of relics of past gods and past cultures. Young officer Paran tries to make sense of the return of his dead beloved as one of the four souls of a magical child; his commander Whiskeyjack tries to do the right thing as both soldier and human being; the scout Toc tries to survive hideous torture and pass on information he only partly knows. Erikson creates an impressive dark world of brutality and sudden beauty in which dizzying vistas of times past suddenly open; his work repays the concentration needed to follow his complex plotting and sentences.
--Roz Kaveney
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Battle dominates the gripping third installment of Canadian Erikson's projected 10-volume series (
Gardens of the Moon, etc.), set in the land of Malazan and featuring a host of gods, grunt soldiers, wizards and undead. Ganoes Paran is now captain of the Bridgeburners, part of Dujek Onearm's army that's trying to fight off the vile forces of the Pannion Domin. The author vividly details the horrors of hand-to-hand combat along with the cannibalistic tendencies of the Tenescowri (or peasant) rabble that fight for the Pannion Domin. The most intriguing new character is Itkovian, a commander of the mercenary Grey Swords who finds, after the battle of Capustan, that his god has deserted him. For a giant fantasy series, this is tightly written, with no repetitious dialogue or exposition. Erikson ranks near the top of the epic fantasy pantheon.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.