Toll the hounds
2008
- fantasy
- fiction
- fiction, thrillers, general
- epic fantasy
- military fantasy
- dark fantasy
- action
- adventure
- magic
- gods
The story
The eighth book in Erikson's extraordinary, acclaimed and bestselling fantasy sequence.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...
What it’s like
Heat-stunned streets, smoke-thick taverns, and cold, austere halls far to the north give this book its sensory range, with prose that shifts between wry, profane street banter and vast, grave passages about gods and armies. Its mood is restless and darkly funny, a sweltering summer dread with flashes of cosmic menace, and it suits a long weekend read or a stretch of late-night reading when you have time to keep track of many threads. The pacing is uneven by design: quiet scenes of talk and scheming give way to sudden, sprawling battles and sharp reversals, and the cast moves through many viewpoints, with the heavier arcs concerning power, loyalty, and redemption. Violence is frequent and graphic, including large-scale combat, bodily injury, and mass death; there is sexual content and cruelty, and the horror comes more from brutality than from supernatural fear. It is not gentle. It is for readers who want an immersive, complicated, and bloody epic, who already know the wider world, or who are ready to commit to a dense, rewarding saga.
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