The Bonehunters by Steven Erikson

This is the 6th installment of Steven Erikson's A Tale of the Malazan Book of the Fallen, one of the best epic fantasy series being written at the moment, and perhaps when complete it will be one of the best epic fantasy series ever written. Erikson combines a world of unparalleled scope and depth with a great storyline filled with intriguing, complex characters. And he diverges from the traditional epic fantasy influences of Tolkien and his primary influences come from the swords and sorcery subgenre, providing a very entertaining high magic setting. To add to all of this, he brings in some excellent humour that alleviates an otherwise very dark tone. Or at least, he usually manages to achieve all of this, and when he does, he creates a masterpiece. So as you can see, I'm a big fan of the series and if you're reading this, you probably know all of that anyway - so I had high expectations, and I expect many people who have read this far into the series will do as well. Unfortunately, The Bonehunters wasn't one of those books.

My advice to you then, if you haven't already read it, is tone down your expectations. This isn't another Deadhouse Gates or Memories of Ice, or even another Midnight Tides. The closest novel to it in terms of quality and style would be Gardens of the Moon. There are few things you notice about the book initially - its size, and the cover. Normally I don't find these particularly important, so long as what's between the covers is worthwhile. But here I just want to make a brief comment on them. In hardback, it's over 900 pages. That's a pretty substantial book, but not exactly unusual for Erikson or even for epic fantasy. I'm used to the Malazan books making these pages fly by, almost entirely lacking in filler. The Bonehunters is different - the pacing is wrong. It feels like a book of 900 pages. In the last section the plot moves at a breakneck speed, perhaps even too fast, so some major events have to be covered in the space of about 10 pages, while the whole of the middle section felt very drawn out. Now, for the cover - it's not a bad cover by any means, but I'm curious as to why the artist decided to pick a scene right at the end of the book. But more importantly, the title - I'm used to Erikson coming up with some really great titles in the past, that are both intriguing and have depth to them - Memories of Ice being one of the best titles I've ever seen - but this one seems incredibly simplistic. Admittedly you find out about the namesake in the second half of the book, but it really isn't that interesting. Perhaps its reflecting the quality of the rest of the book? Anyway, on to the book itself...

The Bonehunters is a book with great potential. There are some very interesting ideas in it, but the writing seems to have taken a dive since Midnight Tides. Everything about the Bonehunters screams "missed opportunity" to me - there are some major deaths (it's Erikson, after all), some shocking, unpredictable events, a large scale siege and conflagration. This is the first book in which the various plotlines begin to converge - the Tiste Edur are becoming increasingly important as Rhulad expands his empire, Icarium draws closer to unleashing his rage again, the aftermath of the Chain of Dogs and the Whirlwind is the primary setting and the war between the gods begins in earnest. But despite all of these really interesting ideas, Erikson didn't quite manage to pull it off. The writing was competent but uninspired for the most part, the humour was forced rather than genuine and the major deaths lacked emotional impact. Erikson's never disguised the fact that he's writing fantasy - his novels are full of complex, high powered magic, intervening gods and hugely powerful individuals. The Bonehunters is no different. We see the return of some of the best characters of the earlier books (particularly from the Bridgeburners - Quick Ben, Kalam and Fiddler back together again) with a few new ones, and some of these characters reveal themselves to be a lot more powerful than previously thought. But for once, Erikson goes over the top with the power of his characters. There are a few scenes which were preposterous to my mind - characters surviving impossible odds when in previous books they had struggled against much more modest numbers. And that fateful Erikson trait returns - he is unwilling to really let go of his characters - the dead are not really dead, and there is one scene which is utterly awful as it (temporarily) brings back a character who we saw die. In the previous books, I only saw this as at most a minor problem with only one glaring case - but it occurs a lot more in the Bonehunters.

A Conclusion: The Bonehunters is a good book, and certainly a lot better than most fantasy that is published. But it is far from Erikson's best - it seemed as if he had suddenly lost all the experience he had gained since writing Gardens of the Moon, as if he was struggling to bring the threads together and was concentrating more on that than on providing a great story. Part of the problem was of course what it had to follow - it would be difficult to live up to Midnight Tides, let alone Memories of Ice or Deadhouse Gates - and having a brilliant story such as those would be very difficult to achieve at this point in the series, but nonetheless I see it as a novel full of unachieved potential. I find it difficult to rate, but I think I would give it 7.5 out of 10.