Bonehunters
2006
- imaginary wars and battles
- war
- fiction
- gods
- fiction, fantasy, epic
- fantasy fiction
- fantasy
The story
The Malazan 14th Army is confronted by a rebel force that is holed up in the city of Y'Ghatan and under the fanatical command of Leoman of the Flails, while the acceptance of the Crippled God into the pantheon threatens to cause a schism among the gods.
What it’s like
Dense, grimy and grinding, the prose of this epic fantasy reads like a field kit: long battle sequences rendered in clipped, weary soldiers' asides, sweat, siege mud, blood-slick cobbles and the stink of a city under investment. Its sensory world is built from heat, rot, rain and smoke rather than grandeur, and the voice shifts constantly between squad-level grit and cosmic, almost mythic remove, with dry gallows humour cutting through the grim stretches. The mood is weary, bitter and darkly funny, closer to a slow, bruising march than a gallop. Violence is frequent and graphic, with brutal, unsparing battle deaths, and there is considerable cruelty, grief and some sexual content. It suits long reading sessions, a reader who wants immersion in a sprawling secondary world, and fans of morally grey soldiers and gods who bicker like exhausted commanders. Not for anyone wanting something gentle or cozy.
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