I read and enjoyed both all of the Malazan Book of the Fallen books, and the all of the previous Bauchelain and Korbal Broach books. But this book is so bad that I can't finish it. It starts off with pages and pages and pages and pages of boring descriptions of boring characters, on a boring journey. I'm sure he thought he was being clever. I can see the start of some sort of mocking of the people who review artists (no doubt people like me in this particular review). But in this case, all that resulted was a horribly boring book with stilted writing, hateful characters, and nothing even remotely resembling a single interesting occurance. Quite simply, this is easily the worst book I have tried to read in at least the last 5 years. Do yourself a favor and skip this. Don't let his otherwise fine track record as an author fool you. If there was a way to demand compensation for the "pain and suffering" inflicted by trying to read this boring book, I would ask for it. If there was a way to get my money back for this travesty, I would. As someone who has been a fan of Erikson's up to this point and who has bought every other book he published, I cannot say how horribly disapointed I am in this. Again, all I can say is "Do NOT buy this".