It is hard to review The Bonehunters without giving away the intricate and twisting plot. More happens in this novel than eleven Robert Jordan novels, which speaks to Eriksen’s ability to drive a plot of enormous scope with many, many characters. The fact that The Bonehunters weighs in at about 1,200 pages also gives the writer a lot of room to maneuver.

The Bonehunters brings the series back into synch, as Midnight Tides was chronologically earlier than this and maybe 1-2 previous entries in The Malazan Book of the Fallen series. The cast of characters is vast as virtually every character from the previous novels is brought into this one. As well many plot lines are boiled down and combined which makes this a very rewarding read.

Eriksen pleasantly pulls no punches with the characters and plot. The plotting is electric and far more ambitious than previous entries in the series. Even with a massive cast of characters Eriksen puts nice touches on most of his characters and advances them well throughout the plot. Fans of Fiddler, Kalam and Quick Ben will be pleased but new characters and secondary characters are well served.

My only complaint is I think two characters seem to have suffered in this novel The first is Paran whom I think is characterized very unevenly. I think Eriksen uses him more as a contrived widget than a fully developed character. The second is the Empress, whom seems vastly different than in previous novels.

Eriksen is the kind of writer that demands a lot of the reader’s attention because his plotting is vast and sometimes complex… sometimes a little muddled too. If there is one complaint I have is sometimes he crams a little too much information into too little space. An extra page or two in the context of a 1200 page novel is not much but in a couple of spots it would have been very useful.

The end result of The Bonehunters is that Eriksen has written himself to the top of the heap in fantasy writers. I say that without hyperbole, his writing is astonishing. His ability to deliver novels at a timely rate is satisfying. If you have not started reading The Malazan Book Of The Fallen, then you are truly missing out.

P.S. It has been more than a long while since I did a review. My writing has taken a wildly different turn in the past couple of years which is also coupled with the fact that I do not roll the dice nearly as much as I would like these days.