I Read Books: Dust Of Dreams

 

Dust Of Dreams

As previously noted this is the first half of a two volume finale to the ten volume Malazan Book Of The Fallen. The Bonehunter Army, having overthrown the Lether Empire, make a leisurely exit to the east into the Wastelands, only to run into another army by accident. Their allies the Khundryl Burned Tears and the Perish Grey Helms, on a parallel route, are betrayed by the treacherous Bolkando Kingdom, and defeat them, coming to a satisfactory resolution. The White Face Bhargast, on the plains north of the routes between Lether and Bolkando, are faced with destruction from within and without, only to have consequences from Toll The Hounds to drop on them.

We’ve spent some time seeing the horrors of city life and civilisation in Toll The Hounds and other books in the series, and now it’s time to see what the tribal barbarians do. It’s nasty! When Onos Tool’an, a resurrected Imass now warleader of the Barghast, finds himself outmanouevered, he sacrifices himself. There follows a night of bloodletting and score-settling, including the attempted murder of his children and the mutilation, rape and continual degradation of his wife.

Several other plotlines develop (conclude?) The Shake, their shoreline realm flooding as the Jhagut-ice melts, return to their ancestral home, which is in the Elder Warren Of Darkness. And there Mother Dark, who turned her face away from her children… may return? Two Malazan marines, previously marked by the Warren Of Fire find themselves abruptly taken to the final battle of the K’Chain Che’Malle, a lizard-hive elder race who are not all undead or hidden remnants, it turns out. Icarium Jhag and others are converging on the Wastelands, seeking their own conclusions. Which don’t come because this is part one of two.

Read This: You have sunk the cost into eight previous volumes, let the fallacy take you on to the end
Don’t Read This: You haven’t read the previous eight, and worse still, have no intention of reading the last