TOLL THE HOUNDS

It is said that Hood waits at the end of every plot, every scheme, each grandiose ambition. But this time it is different: this time the Lord of Death is there at the beginning...

Darujhistan swelters in the summer heat and seethes with portents, rumours and whispers. Strangers have arrived, a murderer is abroad, past-tyrannies are stirring and assassins seem to be targeting the owners of K'rul's Bar. For the rotund, waistcoat-clad man knows such events will be dwarfed by what is about to happen: for in the distance can be heard the baying of hounds.

Far away, in Black Coral, the ruling Tiste Andii appear oblivious to the threat posed by the fast-growing cult of the Redeemer - an honourable, one-mortal man who seems powerless against the twisted vision of his followers.

So Hood waits at the beginning of a conspiracy that will shake the cosmos, but at its end there is another: Anomander Rake, Son of Darkness, has come to right an ancient and terrible wrong...

Steve Rune Lundin, known by his pseudonym Steven Erikson, is a Canadian novelist who was educated and trained as both an archaeologist and anthropologist. He is best known for his ten-volume spanning epic fantasy series Malazan Book of the Fallen, which began with the publication of Gardens of the Moon (1999) and was completed with the publication of The Crippled God (2011). By 2012 over 1 million copies of the series had been sold worldwide, and over 3 million copies by 2018. SF Site has called the series "the most significant work of epic fantasy since Donaldson's Chronicles of Thomas Covenant," and Fantasy Book Review described it as "the best fantasy series of recent times.". Set in the Malazan world, Erikson has written a prequel trilogy, The Kharkanas Trilogy, seven novellas, a short story, and is currently working on a sequel trilogy, the first book of which, titled The God is Not Willing, was published in 2021.